


Don’t Look Behind You (Leave it Past)

by anamatics



Series: don't blink (you might be missed) [2]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of a Case, Case Fic, Crimes & Criminals, Gen, Organized Crime, Sex Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 20:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after Moriarty's escape from Newgate, Joan Watson is trying to move on from the events following her escape.  Things are improving in small steps, as she thinks they should be.  A body washes up on Brighton Beach on the Fourth of July and Joan forgoes baseball with her brother to find herself and Sherlock tangled between two feuding criminal organizations.  Young girls from poor European countries, lured in by the promise of a better life, are being forced into sex work.  Their body on Brighton Beach the first of a string of murders that send Joan and Sherlock down into the seedy underground of New York to find a killer acting on orders to liquidate the organizations' girls before it's too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't look behind you (leave it past)

**Author's Note:**

> there will be rather graphic and violent imagery in this story, as well as frank (and not super descriptive) discussion of rape, sex work, and forced prostitution. Also some mentions of past trauma and the aftermath of that.
> 
> title (adapted) is from 'Let the World Turn' by the band Death - all the titles for this particular piece will be hilariously misquoted and miss-remembered by me from their 1974 album, 'For All the World to See.' Easily the best album I've listened to in a long time.

_It is hard to picture a place like this, static and unmoving.  Jamie feels as though this is her life now.  She sits in the middle of her web and doesn’t move at all.  And she is bored.  She’d started a game for a reason, and now the game isn’t playing out how she’d initially intended.  Jamie supposes that this is partially of her own making; she’d never laid out the terms, just flounced her way out of the room cackling and full of an emotion that she couldn’t define in words._

_Jamie flies back to England on a Russian passport and breezes through customs with put-on poor grasp of the English language.  She chats with the customs official for a few seconds longer than she would have liked, telling him about her supposed hometown and how she’s so excited to be in England. He apparently has a friend from the region and is eager to chat.  Jamie lingers because it’s what a normal person would do, a smile on her face that is as fake as can be and a kind word in a language not her own when he finally stamps her passport.  This passport is mostly blank, a few stamps from the Ukraine and America – nothing too special.  She hadn’t wanted it to stand out.  This is its first stamp from the UK, even though this is a homecoming that’s more than a year in the making._

_Walking out of Heathrow and into a waiting car (a lesser lacky who has no idea that he’s transporting his boss), Jamie is stuck by how long it’s been since she’s actually been back to England.  She’s been playing a ghost for so long, sitting in the shadows so as not to attract attention, the Macedonia job had taken far more planning than her usual work.  And things still hadn’t gone quite as planned._

_Joan Watson – Jamie puffs out her cheeks and stares out the window as she’s driven to the heart of the city and the flat that she’s carefully maintained even though she hasn’t had cause to be home in what feels like forever._

_The driver stops at the corner, well away from the building itself.  No one knows of this place, save Jamie herself.  She intends to keep it this way, and the driver is so far away from the center of her web that he doesn’t even linger as she drifts into the grocer’s on the corner.  Fool.  She’ll have to find a use for him somewhere not in London now, though.  Or maybe just kill him.  She can always find a new driver._

_She buys bread and tea and a small jar of raspberry jam and heads to the flat. It’s rented in her name, her real name and paid for out of her account in Switzerland every month.  The key is where she’d left it, tucked behind the neighbor’s third flower pot to the left, under a crusty layer of dirt.  She blows on it to clean it off, and slides the key home in the lock._

_Inside is Jamie’s sanctum.  It’s a crusty remnant of a girl with a cruel mother and an absent father, and it stands in defiance to the very essence of Moriarty.  This place holds pictures, memories, art from her youth; everything Jamie wishes she could forget about herself.  It’s the one place she knows she’ll be safe, at least for the time being._

_She puts the kettle on for tea._

_Jamie has people she could call into service in England, but she chooses to drift northwards.  She ends up in Glasgow after a few days of meandering, directionless, around London. The holiday has clogged the city with people and it’s much like New York.  She feels choked off by it, and yet, if Jamie’s honest, she enjoys the anonymity of the large city more than she likes the wide open spaces that the English and then subsequently Scottish countryside provide.  She feels exposed there, even though no one knows her face here.  Here she’s still safe to do what she pleases without having to constantly look over her shoulder.  She never thought she’d miss being an unknown._

_It had been a calculated risk to reveal herself, and Jamie still isn’t sure that it’s paid off._

_The pretext of her trip to Scotland is to collect Mr. Collins from the impossibly messy business of handling his mother’s estate.  She needs the information only his contacts can provide and he’s grieved for long enough.  Westin says that he’s been away since October, and that’s more than enough time to settle the estate of the widow of a shepherd and the mother of a contract killer.  Still, she’s been infected with the Christmas spirit, and she’s going to give him a choice._

_The flat where Collins’ mother lived is impossibly small, just three rooms and a tiny toilet that Jamie takes one look into and proceeds to avoid like the plague.  Collins himself is a large, hulking man.  He’s probably the closest thing Jamie has to a friend, as well as her usual driver and bodyguard when she’s home.  He’d been there the day that she’d first underestimated Joan Watson, and now he looks absolutely shattered in comparison to how he’d seemed in those moments that Jamie has spent the better part of four months scrutinizing down to the minutia._

_Still, she’s let herself in and is standing in the doorway when he comes in from the kitchen, a can of beer in his hand, mumbling about the football match that’s playing quietly on the television in the corner.  “Em,” he says, catching sight of her, his dark cheeks growing even darker.  He’s blushing and she has no idea why. Jamie wonders if it’s because of the ghastly state of the flat.  “What the bloody hell are you doing out?”_

_She smiles then, sliding into the room and depositing her purse onto an armchair that’s seen better days.  “Prison walls are only as strong as their weakest link, Mr. Collins,” she replies.  She bends down and picks up the television remote and silences the infernal noise of the match.  “I’ve come to collect you.  I am in need of your services once more and I simply cannot abide your wasting away in this place any longer.”_

_Collins collapses onto the sofa and sets his beer down on the floor next to his booted foot.  He looks defeated, and as though he hasn’t slept in a long time.  It is the drawn and weary look that Jamie knows well, and she hates it on him, he doesn’t deserve it.  He needs to be distracted, to be thrown back into work so that he will remember that life is his to control, not an unstoppable force that he must sit by and passively observe. “I had no idea that you’d come yourself, mum,” he says._

_Jamie likes her organization to be fairly autonomous.  Each thread she casts has a specific purpose; they have no business knowing about any of the other’s existence.  Collins knows of Sheng Li and Sam Westin, and Westin knows as many as she does.  Jamie had needed him, and she’d brought him into the fold knowing he could betray her at any possible moment.  It was a risk that had proven itself a thousand times over; Sam Westin was the greatest investment she’d made in recent years._

_Still, she would have expected Westin to have called him.  She sniffs and turns her nose up.  “I would have thought Westin would be in touch.”_

_Collins runs his fingers through his short black curls. He’s wearing a t-shirt that looks like it’s from his days at college and has certainly seen better days and faded jeans that are very expensive, even if they’re made to look shabby.  “He said you’d gotten out and that I was needed.  I figured that he’d come and fetch me.  Miss ‘im, you know, it’s hard not working with your mates.”  He glances at her sideways.  “Do you erm… want something to drink?”_

_“Not particularly,” she says.  She folds her arms across her chest and surveys the flat.  It looks mostly packed up. There are bare patches on the walls where photographs had been hung on the wall.  It looks rather like the walls in her safe-house in New York.   “We have cleaners for things like this, Mr. Collins, why not employ their services?”_

_“Respectfully, mum,” Collins begins, reaching down with his large hands and picking up his beer.  He stares at it for a moment before he takes a sip that looks almost painful.  He’s uncomfortable relaxing around her, and Jamie doesn’t blame him.  He owes her more respect than that.  “I couldn’t bring myself to let anyone but me touch these things.  I’m… not the best person, but this was my mother, I owe it to ‘er to make sure ‘er things get cared for.  I just never thought…” Collins pauses then, and swallows nervously.  Jamie watches the bob of his adam’s apple and wonders if she could slice it out of his throat without him dying.  It’d be an interesting experiment, to be certain.  She’s not sure, though, if she wants Collins dead.  He hasn’t given her an answer that she likes, yet, however.  “Well, that I’d be pants at it.”_

_She knows that she should be comforting, that she’s a good employer and while they are both murders, the death of a parent is never easy to stomach. Jamie remembers her own pain at her father’s death, but she does not understand the compassion for the mothers.  Mothers, after all, are the cruelest of all.  The problem is that this could not have happened at worse time and she needs Collins now. There simply isn’t time to fuss over every minute detail of his dead mother’s life._

_Compassion has never come easily to Jamie, even when it should suit her to possess some.  It was never taught in her family, and so even when she’s pretending it feels stilted and unnatural.  Jamie overcompensates, as she always does, by being as ruthless as she possibly can.  “Unfortunately, Mr. Collins, you’ve run out of time.  Your services are required.” She lets her expression soften, her lips no longer a tight line of barely suppressed annoyance that he is daring to defy her wishes.  “I can give you the afternoon, but we must leave tonight.”_

_He nods, just once, and picks up his beer once more.  She watches him cradle it in his hands for a moment before she turns and walks out of the room.  It’s started to rain._

_She wanders the city under an umbrella; stepping into shops and never lingering long enough for her face to be remembered.  She finds a book that she thinks might prove interesting, and then her fingers trail down the spine of a book that she’d been given on the eve of her father’s death by some long-forgotten cousin.  She thinks about the message that was circled so tightly in the prose of the novel and wonders if it would help Collins to move on._

_She buys the book and tucks one of the store’s bookmarks inside. It’s printed to look like an etching, an angel’s head carved into the book’s signage and a proclamation of ‘since 1895’ underneath the shop’s name.  A breadcrumb, Jamie thinks.  Perfect._

_The book was never for Collins anyway._

**Don’t Look Behind You (Leave it Past)**

_January (Six Months Ago) –_

Halfway through January, Jamie finds herself painting once more.  This time she’s able to count out a thousand strokes, twisting the brush around in yellows and reds until she has the perfect shade.  She rocks back on her heels and stares at the small patch of high cheek bone, dusted with freckles.  This is going to be quite the undertaking, and the weight of it presses heavily down between her shoulder blades. 

She hadn’t been lying to Sherlock when she’d told him that she did not paint original work.  Not exactly.

She’s just never found the occasion to create something truly her own.

And this is the second time she’s felt inclined to break that rule. 

She’s working with oils this time. Having spent hours laying down her gesso and her basic color blocking; she’s finally started to paint proper, twisting the brush around circles of paint that smears like its namesake. Jamie’s trained herself to coax smooth, perfect lines from this medium, but she rather likes the harshness of how her brush is hitting the canvas now.  She thinks she’ll maintain this style as it is truly one of her own.  The painting has emerged slowly: the corner of a high cheekbone and freckles that dance like a dusting of stars across the night sky. 

Jamie uses the time, a thousand brush strokes, to think about the current situation.  She hasn’t taken a job in some time.  There had been one on New Year’s Eve, a simple stabbing that she hadn’t even bothered to delegate.  It had felt good to hold a knife in her hands, to twist it and to feel the lifeblood of this woman (pretty, 35, Pakistani - currently embezzling thousands of pounds from Jamie’s employer) seep out and over her fingertips.  Jamie had just resisted the urge to lick the blood off as the woman stared up at her, a multitude of questions on her dying lips. 

She had answered none of them and had woven her way back through the New Year’s revelers to a hotel that she’d booked for this express purpose.  She’d stared at the blood that had stained her hands then, watching as it ran down her arms in the sink under barely hot water.  It had swirled in soapy red circles until it was gone, reminding Jamie far too much of dirty paintbrushes and filling her mind with thoughts of what it would be like to paint in blood.

Nigel Peddicort, and through him, the PKE Group are moving on New York again.  She’s watched as he’s blatantly disregarded her exceptionally polite request, and her anger has only grown.  He will not defy her again. Jamie should have sent a stronger message, she knows that now.  She’d extended a professional courtesy that she will not this time.  Peddicort, in defying her, has signed his death warrant.  It’s just a matter of time until Jamie acts. 

On the far wall is her own version of the murder board that Sherlock and Watson so favor.  Making sure that Peddicort is killed in the most humiliating manner for the PKE Group is second only to ensuring that her trail of breadcrumbs for her dear Watson continues to be maintained.  

She understands now, or at least she thinks she does, why Joan Watson is so important to this whole series of events that are just now starting to play out.  She is going to take Joan Watson from Sherlock and it’s going to be the final straw that truly breaks him.  She is going to take Joan Watson and corrupt her soul as only one such as herself can.

And watching Joan Watson fall is going to be the stuff that chases away the bad dreams that so plague Jamie late into the night. 

She’s sitting in the middle of the room that she’s commandeered in a hotel that has no guests, her fingers splayed out like a queen, splendid over the vast riches of her kingdom.  All around her is the empty sound of silence, the quiet ringing in Jamie’s ears fills up the void that is left by everything she's chosen to forget.  She strains to hear something, anything, until the ringing is all that remains and she sits back, reveling in it. 

Collins is sitting in the corner, going over papers from a solicitor regarding her assets in New York.  Jamie doesn’t run drugs or girls or even weapons.  She lets others do that.  Instead she trades in secrets, as all the best do.  She knows which screws to turn and which to leave unturned.  The solicitors are keeping track of her assets as compared to how they’ve been frozen following her arrest in America, and Jamie hopes that this is good news. 

She’s been throwing darts fashioned out of framing wire and razors at a cut out of Nigel Peddicort’s face for the better part of two hours while Collins reads.  She’s waiting, knowing that she must act but not knowing how.  New York and its people are  _her’s_ ; she will not share them lightly.  She hurls another dart and her face falls as it hits the first, buried as it is between Peddicort’s eyes at the bridge of his nose.  She should have thrown it harder.

“It looks like they’ve managed to unfreeze some of the funds,” Collins says after a pause that Jamie feels lasts forever.  His large hands cradle the papers between them and Jamie watches him with a curious expression on her face as he carefully taps them back into perfect shape. 

“Good,” Jamie replies.  “Get me the car; we must pay Mr. Peddicort a visit, Mr. Collins.”

“Certainly, mum.”

It is only later, when Jamie is staring down at Peddicort’s maimed body, a gunshot straight through his mouth to the back of his skull and railroad spikes through his hands and feet in a biblical style that she’s sure will scare the PKE Group into compliance, that she realizes how much she’s missed getting her hands dirty.  Peddicort is pathetic in his death, and Jamie knows that leaving him like this is not enough.  She has to find a way to make him stand out, to drive the point home and ensure that they know what is sure to happen should they dare cross her again.  Above her a cross hangs, almost mocking, and Jamie's lips twitch.  That will keep them guessing for a while. Hiding from Sherlock and his Watson has been one thing that has forced her into the shadows.  Jamie hates to hide.  She’s not the sort of person who can do that easily, and she refuses to on principle unless it is a necessity.  This is not the time for subtlety.

She’d warned Peddicort, she truly had.  She’d warned him and he’d spat in her face. 

She would kill him three times over for that. 

Once, she hopes, is enough to get the PKE Group to leave their enterprise in New York to others.  They have no business in Jamie’s city, and Jamie wants them gone.  If they know what’s good for them, they’ll already be leaving.  She’s said that once before, though, and she’s not about to repeat the experience.  Peddicort is beautiful in his death, and she strings him up in the middle of the church where they all met as boys for all of the PKE Group to see.  She hopes they get the message.

One simply does not dare Jamie into action.  Moriarty will win every time.

-

_July -_

A body is found floating in the water just off Brighton Beach on July 4th at nine-thirty in the morning.  Joan doesn’t get a text about it until three o’clock that afternoon, when her phone starts to vibrate obnoxiously in her pocket.  She’s content to ignore it, she’d told Sherlock, after all, that she’d be unreachable for the day, but Oren gestures to her buzzing pocket and inclines his head in question.  Joan sighs and pulls it out of her pocket, setting down the Mets tickets for later on that night and somehow knowing that she’s not going to get to go.

Sherlock has texted her a series of increasingly incomprehensible acronyms for things that Joan is pretty sure are completely made up on his part.  She understands that he likes to take shortcuts, and that not being able to speak directly to Joan is enough to drive him mad.  He has enough trouble coming to the point as it is. 

“Something up, Joanie?” Oren asks.  He leans over the picnic table and pucks her phone from her fingers, twisting it over in his hands.  His eyebrows climb steadily up his forehead and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth for a moment, as he always does when he’s thinking.  “That man,” he announces, handing Joan back her phone and shaking his head broadly, “is absolutely insane.”

“I know,” Joan replies.  “I keep telling people, but no one seems to listen to me.”

Oren gestures to her phone.  “What the hell does any of that even  _mean_?”  He passes it to Joan when she holds out her hand for it, ever the good bother.

Joan laughs and tucks her phone back into her over-shirt breast pocket. “Smarter people than you or I have tried to figure that out, little brother.  No one’s had any luck.”  She’s lying about the last part, but Oren doesn’t need to know that.  He’s not the sort of person who can understand what it means to have an arch nemesis who prides herself on being smarter than the smartest.  Joan isn’t really even sure that she understands it, but she does know that it’s very quickly becoming her problem as well. 

There’s so much she doesn’t speak to Oren about anymore.  They used to be so close, but things have changed so drastically in their relationship in the past few years.  Joan has left the profession that he idolized and aspired to follow her into, she’s had a failed career as a sober companion and now is trying, desperately, to keep her head above water with it comes being a consulting detective.

In January, as the New York courts held the first of a series of highly public and widely reported trials for Sonny Park, Korean national and denizen of the criminal underbelly of China, Moriarty had sent her a book.  It had come from London, but the bookseller was in Glasgow, Scotland.  Joan had spent an evening researching the bookseller, one of the oldest in the city.  The book had lain, unread, on her bed as she chased the nightmares away trying to figure out why Moriarty would be in Scotland.  Sonny Park had ruined her nights for her, and Moriarty was a welcome distraction.

That was, until Joan had opened the book and found a carefully penned line of an adage that she had made her mantra for years. Joan hates that she recognizes Moriarty’s handwriting, and she hates the fact that she finds it somewhat beautiful in its looping, almost girlish curl even more.  Moriarty has no business being involved in her life, even if Joan has sworn her doom and Moriarty has sealed the deal with a kiss.

“ _This, too, shall pass_.”

This book is by an obscure French author, and it takes Joan some fairly extensive Googling, plus a call to a friend who works as a librarian, to learn anything about her. The book itself is about an unnamed calamity that befalls a family and their attempts to carry on.  The worst part of all is that it’s helping in a way that Joan’s therapist and her mother and everyone else who’s trying to help her cope with what Sonny Park did to her cannot.  The book itself looks inconsequential, but Joan’s taken to carrying it around with her, thumbing through it when she can’t shake the lingering pain in her arm or the nightmares that plague her sleep. 

Moriarty is tossing her breadcrumbs and Joan is choosing to take the book for what it is, a tool that helps her on her recovery.  She supposes that tumbling her nose like to that to Moriarty is sure to irritate her more than actually trying to track her down in Scotland or England or wherever the hell she’s gone off to now.  There haven’t been any sightings of the woman in close to five months.

Her phone beeps again and Joan looks almost longingly at the Mets tickets on the picnic table between herself and Oren.  “I don’t think we’re going,” she says quietly.  “Take mom.”

Oren lets out a bark of sarcastic laughter. “And get a lecture on how liking baseball isn’t a productive use of my time?  As a grown-ass man, I think I’m entitled to say no thanks.”

Joan slides her thumb over her phone and punches in her unlock code (which does absolutely nothing to protect her privacy, but Joan likes to pretend that it does), and stares at the most recent text.  It’s from Sherlock, but it makes a lot more sense than the others. 

 _Need you Watson,_ it reads.   _Body found is Russian or Ukrainian.  Shows signs of repeated sexual abuse. Could be a former sex worker? Want your assessment post haste._

It’s easy to sigh it off then, because Sherlock doesn’t need her medical opinion at all.  Joan hasn’t been a doctor for a long time now, it’s reasonable to expect her skills and knowledge to fade.  Reasonable to everyone but Sherlock it seems.  He’s the only one who knows her well enough to know that she was top of her class and that she still keeps up with the journals, even if she’s not currently practicing. Everyone else that Joan knows thinks she was stupid to leave medicine in the first place.  Sherlock, at least, respects her decision to do so.

“What about your girlfriend?” Joan asks.  She’s met her a few times now, each time it’s been awkward, because she still sees Oren as a fifteen year old kid, obsessed with baseball and his N64.  “She like the Mets?”

“Phillies fan,” Oren mutters.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” Joan asks, sliding her phone locked once more after sending a message to Sherlock that he owes her a baseball game of her choosing. “I’m pretty sure I heard something about being a fan of the Phillies.”

“Hey, she could be a Nats fan,” Oren tries, but Joan’s already doing her best impression of their mother and scowling deeply at him, righteous judgmental anger expressed in every inch of her face. He knows she’s joking, but the look is one that their mother uses to great effect and has utilized for many, many years. “Oh come on, sis.  Sherlock doesn’t even  _like_ baseball.”

“As I am not dating him, that is simply one of his many unfortunate personality quirks that I must cope with on a daily basis,” Joan replies breezily. As if she was even remotely interested in getting into bed with Sherlock, Oren really should know better.  She’s already gathering her things and pressing the tickets into Oren’s hand.  If she hurries, she can catch the three-twelve train back to Brooklyn.  “Look, I’ll try to come back tonight, but if not, tell mom that I’m working and that I’ll make it up to her.”

Oren watches her go, his fingers cradling the tickets in his hands and sighing expressively as Joan hurries away.  She hates that she has to go, but the details that Sherlock’s texted her are intriguing and Joan wants to know more.  It’s not exactly an unknown fact that there’s a seedy underbelly of New York, or that there is a pretty active sex trade in the city.  It’s not as bad as some cities, but they’re no strangers to encountering sex workers in their line of work.  Sherlock, in particular, seems to revel in meeting them.  Joan just tries to be polite and respects the hell out of some of them for doing what they do.  She certainly could never do it.

The train ride goes quickly, once Sherlock realizes that she’s actually going to respond to his texts, he provides her with fairly comprehensible details of the case.  Joan reviews the information and realizes why Sherlock was so desperate to get a hold of her.  Nothing about this makes any sense.

-

The girl looks like she could be a college student, lying on a slab in the morgue as Marcus argues with Sherlock over the merits of a canvas around the beach.  Sherlock doesn’t see the point, mostly because the girl obviously had not been in the water for very long at all – her body was dumped and probably spent less than three hours in the water.  Her skin is scarcely bloated.  Joan would be willing to bet that the medical examiner might actually be able to determine time of death based on the condition of the body. 

“She has a tattoo,” Joan says. She’s wearing gloves, her fingers dancing over the girl’s hairline and pulling some of her sandy-blonde (not dyed, Joan notes, jotting it down) hair out of the way above her ear.  The interlocking P and backwards K inside a thick black line of a square makes her breath come in a  quick gasp that gets Sherlock’s attention when her announcement that she had a tattoo had gone uncommented upon. 

He and Marcus crowd around Joan and the three of them take in the mark.  Joan knows that Sherlock recognizes it from the case last November with the fake iPhones and iPods.  It’s the mark of a group that they’d been pretty certain dealt only in counterfeit technologies and maybe some drugs.  They’re not one of the major players in the city; Sherlock’s assured her of that. 

“It seems that she lied,” Sherlock says when they walk out of the morgue some twenty minutes later, a box of files in Sherlock’s hands as Joan hails them a cab.  They don’t have much to go on, so they’re going to try and identify her based on recent work visas issued to Eastern European women.  INS has been very considerate, considering their volatile relationship with the NYPD with the request. 

“Who?” Joan asks, even though she knows the answer already. 

Sherlock stares up the street and hugs the box to his chest like it’s going to protect him from the undercurrent of emotions that Joan knows are filtering just below the surface of his impassive face. “Moriarty,” he says quietly.  She can tell from his tone that he’s not entirely sure that he wants to share.  Joan’s glad he’s trying, they’ve played this game before it’s always ended in one of them being exceptionally frustrated by the other.  “She assured me that she had effectively eliminated the PKE Group from New York at the time of your kidnapping.  They were, after all, the group who’d initially hired Sonny Park.”

Joan… had not known that. Or rather, she’d known that Moriarty had been instrumental in her rescue from Park’s hands, and that she and Sherlock had agreed to each other’s terms to orchestrate the rescue.  She hadn’t realized that Moriarty had been more involved than chancing upon the right floor.  She looks at Sherlock sharply and he closes his eyes in a look that Joan knows is resignation, no matter how much it looks like annoyance on his face. 

“Because of Jess Delhaney’s husband?” Joan doesn’t know what she wants out of this, but she wants to get to the bottom of this before they delve into another case. She’s told Sherlock time and time again that this partnership won’t work if they’re not honest with each other.  Sherlock’s learning; she understands that it’s a slow process for someone like him and she’s a little more willing to be forgiving when it comes to Moriarty. 

“I would think so.  She was able to determine that they’d acted and she used that moment to warn them out of the city,” Sherlock explains, tapping his chin with one hand and fidgeting as the cab pulls to a stop beside them.  He sets the box on the cab seat and slides in after Joan.  She tells the cabbie their address and then watches as Sherlock pulls out his phone.  “I found this not long after they arraigned Sonny Park.”

The article in question is about a bizarre murder that took place in London near a boy’s school sometime in mid-January.  Joan reads the report with almost greedy eyes, a sick feeling growing at the pit of her stomach.  She recognizes the handiwork, even if it appears religiously motivated and doesn’t fit any known profile they have of Moriarty. 

Nigel Peddicort, 45, international business man with connections in exports in Hong Kong and Seoul, had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the mouth after he’d been nailed to a cross outside of the church he and several of his business partners frequented with railroad spikes.  What was even more interesting was that this was just outside the boy’s school where Peddicort had spent his formative years.

“Well,” Joan begins, but finds that she has nothing that she wants to say.  She doesn’t want to think about Moriarty and her smug, smiling face as she flounced out of Joan’s bedroom that night.  She still doesn’t understand why Moriarty had risked so much to come back to return something as inconsequential as a set of  _lock picks._

(Joan doesn’t use them anymore.  She’s buried them deep at the back of her closet with the sketch that she’d been sent on Christmas Day.  She doesn’t hide the book from Sherlock, and he’s read it cover to cover and had announced one day that if Joan truly thought that it was helping, then all the power to her, Moriarty obviously must know a thing or two about handling the sort of trauma that she inflicts upon people. Joan had rolled her eyes at that, but she’s got whole passages in the book dog-eared and highlighted to remember them.  She hates that it’s helping and she hates even more than Moriarty knows her well enough to know that it would.)

They lapse into silence then, and Joan hands Sherlock back his phone.  “Maybe she didn’t lie,” Joan suggests as they sit behind a long line of cars at a red light on a timer.  “Maybe they’ve just pushed back into the city.  Her control over the city probably isn’t as good as she thinks it is, especially after her time in prison.”  Joan isn’t sure that she actually believes that, but it makes for a better narrative than ‘oh, the PKE Group decided to stick it to the evil queen of the underworld herself’ on a lark. 

She’s not afraid of Moriarty or her twisted web of murderers and informants.  This murder, however, is so over-the-top that she wonders if Moriarty is indeed trying to send a message, and if so, to whom.  It’s obviously meant to instill fear in  _someone_.

“Peddicort,” Sherlock explains, tapping the phone and going to another window.  Joan leans over until she sees that he’s fired up Candy Crush for something to do with his hands as they discuss the case. “Was one of the five board members of the mostly France-based PKE Group.  If they have some sort of a prostitution operation going on in the city, it is probably a fairly new establishment.  I’m sure, if we asked around, we could find a few annoyed prostitutes who might be able to point us in the right direction.”

“Sherlock, we don’t even know if she was a prostitute,” Joan replies, feeling almost exasperated that he’s already figured out that the dead girl was.  She hadn’t seen anything, other than trauma to the genitals, that would indicate that the girl was in the sex trade.

His expression darkens, and he voices the concern that Joan hadn’t articulated, but certainly was thinking.  “Or if she willingly participated in the sexual acts that left her body so obviously traumatized.”

“The salt water would have destroyed any evidence a rape kit would have collected,” Joan says, puffing out her cheeks and staring out the window at the city street as it starts to inch by once more.  The cab is moving slowly, its rush hour.  They should have taken the subway; they would have been home by now on the C-Train. 

“Which is why we need to investigate the prostitution angle fully, Watson,” Sherlock replies.  He’s a nervous bundle of energy, crushing candle with his thumb, hardly looking at the screen.  Joan has no idea how he’s doing it, but she supposes that he sees the pattern and the puzzle in the game as well.  “We can go out tonight, if you’re amenable to the idea of spending a night chatting up hookers.”

What Sherlock doesn’t realize, as always, is that Joan doesn’t mind speaking to sex workers.  During her residency, she’d done an ER rotation and she’d patched up her fair share of strong, beautiful women who did what they had to do to survive.  They always had stories to tell her that made her day a little more interesting.  She doesn’t even mind being flirted with, because the attention of anyone attractive is better than thinking about the dry spell she’s working on right now. 

(And Joan has tried, really she has.  But she’s getting older and she honestly doesn’t like the idea of picking up a twenty-something in a bar and taking them home for the night.  She doesn’t particularly care who she picks up, but it’s the sick moment of realization that it’s getting to the point where a twenty-something could be her  _kid_  that has chased Joan away to online dating and all the joys that that entails.)

“That’s fine,” Joan replies smoothly.  She doesn’t blink as he looks are her curiously.  She’s learned over their partnership that it’s better to not when he’s looking at her like that.  It’s a sign of weakness that he pounces on and obsesses over until the point where Joan’s learned that it’s simply not worth the trouble.  She always wins staring contests with him, anyway.

-

Marcus has vice connections that point them in the direction of three hotels where there have been arrests of Russian-speaking Johns in the past.  Sherlock promptly nixes two of them as being 'too upscale' for the sort of girl that they're looking for.  Joan isn't exactly sure that she likes his implication there, but she goes along with it because he does have something of a sense about these things.  She trails half a step behind him as they slip into a hotel bar and situate themselves where they can people watch.

It’s the oddest thing, going to bars with Sherlock.  She knows, as anyone who’s done any worth with those struggling with addiction, that the temptation isn’t worth it.  The problem is that Sherlock has never been particularly interested in alcohol, even before he’d been to rehab.  “Dulls the senses,” he’d explained.  “Even after…” he’d shaken his head and shrugged.  “I wanted to forget and I wanted to do it quickly.  Heroin seemed the more expedient option.”

Joan hadn’t had a response for that then, and she still doesn’t now, as Sherlock marches up to the bar and demands to know if they have had any ladies of the evening about the place recently.  The guy looks at Sherlock as though he’s got two heads and slowly shakes his head.  He waits until Joan slides onto a barstool beside Sherlock before actually acknowledging the question.

“Get a few,” he says, his lips barely moving as he sets a glass down before them and Sherlock slips him a twenty.  The bartender slides the bill into his pocket and then adds, “None right now though.”

As it’s close to eight, Joan’s not entirely sure she blames them for not being out.  She lets her shoulders slump and stares around at the televisions above the bar.  Two are playing the Sox-Yankees and a third is showing Sports Center. 

"Anything for you two?" the bartender asks.

Joan sets a twenty down on the bar and smiles at the guy (mid-30s, gym rat with a barbed wire douche-tattoo around his bicep, trying to look 25 with spray tan and hair gel).  "Could I get a vodka tonic, and... what do you want?"

Sherlock leans over, forearms on the bar.  "Seltzer with lemon."  He smiles all teeth and regret that is entirely fake-looking to Joan.  Sometimes she catches herself wondering when she grew to be able to read him quite like the open book that he is to her now.  He still does things, sometimes, that she cannot explain, but for the most part Joan understands Sherlock, and she’s still not entirely sure when he started to make sense to her.  It’s an odd feeling, to look at him and be able to see all that he wants to convey to this man, and all that he is (stubbornly) holding back from her.  "I'm the DD."  He says it so truthfully that it’s only in his eyes that Joan sees the insincerity.

The bartender, however, seems to buy it.  "Tough luck bro," he says, and turns to get their drinks.

Joan checks her watch and leaves the five she gets with a few singles as change for a tip.  This is something that Sherlock hadn’t needed to teach her.  To get a bartender to talk to you, you tip more than you should.  Joan had learned that lesson in college, with Emily and a terrible date that they’d be so desperate to ditch that they’d pooled all their change to have the bartender sneak them out through the kitchen and into a waiting cab.  "Can you put on the Mets game?"  she asks, accepting her drink.

It's only two innings into the game that the bar starts to fill.  The Mets are losing spectacularly, and Joan's stopped paying attention.  Going to a middle reliever after two innings is never a good sign.  Neither is being in a five-nil hole.

They sit next to each other, knees knocking together, and watch over each other's shoulders. Joan’s done this enough to know what to look for.  She’s sipping on the vodka, and the bartender hasn’t made it particularly strong.  She finds herself contemplating her notes and she notices that he’s looking over at her and then inclining his head towards a woman who has slipped into the bar without either of them noticing.  Joan tugs Sherlock’s sleeve and he turns slowly, like he’s done it a million times before.  They’re not playing a couple, or at least she hopes not, because that would be weird, but rather partners.  Two equal halves. 

Sherlock nods his agreement with her query, he lets her do the approach, watching with his seltzer and lemon held before him like it’s a lifeline.

This is the part that Joan likes.  Talking to people has always been her forte; even in surgery she enjoyed that part the most. Getting to know her patients was always her favorite part.  "Hi," she says, sliding in next to the girl.  "I'm Joan."

The girl looks up at her though overly made up eyes and a haggard look that Joan hates that she's come to know during her time working with Sherlock.  It's the look of a person whose life has become so downtrodden that they are numb to the world.  "Kitty," she replies and her accent is present, but not as pronounced as Joan might have expected. She's fiddling with a cigarette, even though there's a ban on smoking indoors in the city.  Joan debates offering to take her outside and away from the hotel entrance so she can smoke, but decides not to.  "What do you like?"

"I like talking," Joan says quietly.  Over the time she’s worked with Sherlock she’s become something of an expert at this particular game.

Kitty puffs out her cheeks, a dirty-looking lock hair falling into her eyes.  "Then you are in the right place," she leans in closer, and Joan can see that her teeth are crooked, but well cared-for.  She smells nice, but the stale smell of cigarettes lingers around her.  Joan wonders how many cigarettes she smokes and if she’s been to a doctor about the dark splotches under her fingernails. They look painful.  Like a door was slammed on her hand.  "I am an excellent talker."

Kitty's real name is Donka Kuzovski.  She's from somewhere out in rural Russia that Sherlock recognizes but Joan doesn't know, but thinks sounds vaguely familiar when he reminds her of a book she’d read as a child in school.  It’s on the steppes, far away from most normal civilization, even by Russian standards.  Sherlock and Joan explain to her what they’re looking for, showing her the picture of their Jane Doe and watch as Donka’s expression changes from the polite intrigue that she’d held downstairs in the bar, to something drawn and worried.  After a long moment of staring at the dead girl’s face, hair pulled to the side so that the PKE Group’s mark is clearly visible, she sits down heavily on the bed in their hastily purchased hotel room and tells them what they want to know.

"Everyone knows those girls, you know?"  She shakes her head and takes a pull on her cigarette. Her English is fantastic, Joan notes, and while it is accented, she can converse without it showing through too much.  "This work isn't for everyone, and you can tell the ones who have no choice.   When I came here, I knew what was coming - they do not."

"If you don't mind my asking, do you know how the girls are tricked into coming here?"  Joan asks.  She doesn't think it’s right to question Donka on her choices, as she's obviously fully in control of her life. The injury to her hand is enough to make Joan worried, but she seems fine, not in distress and completely in control of her surroundings.  

Joan has read magazine articles and seen specials on the TV news about how much of a problem girls being pulled off the streets in poor, former Soviet countries has become.  It’s almost a global crisis at this point, and Donka seems to have embraced the life, even if Joan’s not entirely sure it’s right to ask how she’d ended up in New York and working like this.  "Is it the promise of citizenship?"

"They are told there is a manufacturing job, maybe textiles or even farming, usually that's on the eastern part of Long Island though.  And then one thing leads to another," Donka shakes her head and she suddenly looks far older than she had before, her eyes carrying the weight of all of those girls and their pain around with her. "You understand, though, that the men who do this to care little for the girls in their care.  They are not well cared for, and only the cheapest, most desperate men go to them."  Donka looks away, her expression growing dark.  "They are little girls, and they do not deserve the fate they have been handed."

"Is this why you're willing to help us?"  Sherlock asks.

"I knew her, the girl you showed me," Donka replies.  "Her name was Katia and she was one of their good earners.  Why they'd want to eliminate her is beyond me.  I think she didn't mind the work as much as some of their other girls."

Sherlock catches Joan's eye and they share a long look.  Joan knows what he's thinking and it truly doesn't make much sense.  Why would a pimp kill off his best earner?  The very idea seemed contradictory to a business so founded in earning money.

Donka glances between them and her shoulders slump.  "You both think you know so much, that you see because you think to ask.  Katia, she was the same way.  She told me in January that something was wrong."

"How do you mean?"  Joan asks, her brow furrowing, thinking of the heavily censored picture that the newspaper article on Nigel Peddicort had painted of how he'd been killed.  Katia had been connected to the PKE group in one way or another, and Peddicort was one of their board members.

Shrugging, Donka tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and produces another cigarette.  She lights it and exhales politely away from Joan.  "I don't know.  She just said changes were coming, I didn't ask her to elaborate."

They leave the hotel some two hundred and fifty dollars of Sherlock's petty cash an hour later with as many names as Donka could remember and a promise to keep her name out of it unless they truly have no other choice.  As they're not the police, Joan truly hopes that they can honor that agreement.  Marcus and Captain Gregson have their way of doing things, and it oftentimes doesn't give a great deal of respect to women who chose to work as Donka does.

They head down to the subway station, waiting idly on the platform for their now infrequently-running train as Sherlock flips through Joan's notes with a disinterested expression on his face.  He sighs heavily, shifting from foot to foot, antsy.

"What?" Joan asks after a few more minutes of twitchiness.  She's used to it, she has to be, but it still doesn't make much sense at all.

Sherlock hands her back her notebook and scratches at his chin.  He's relatively clean-shaven today, which is good as he's been complaining almost daily about how the summer heat of the city makes his beard horribly itchy.  Joan had picked him up hypo-allergenic aftershave almost as a joke, but he honestly seems to be making something of an effort, even if it's just due to the heat.

"Why would any self-respecting madam or pimp decide to kill their favorite whore?" Sherlock posits the question like Joan has the answer and when she shrugs, he continues, "And why did Katia think that there were changes coming back in January?  Is it because of Nigel Peddicort's death?  I can't imagine how the death of one executive would stop such a remote string of their operation."

"We really don't know what the extent of their operation is in the city, though," Joan points out.  The train is coming; she can hear it rattling about in the dark of the tunnel.  "All we know is that Moriarty doesn't want them here."

Sherlock shakes his head.  "It almost is enough to wish that there was an easy way of demanding answers from that woman.  She’s obviously killed Peddicort, but why? What sort of a message does a murder that theatrical send and why has it ended in the death of a prostitute who probably didn't know Nigel Peddicort from Adam?"

The train rattles into the station and Joan bites her lip.  She's not about to tell Sherlock that he cannot even entertain the idea of trying to get in contact with a known fugitive.  They've been good with Gregson and with Marcus recently, but Joan knows that another slip-up like what happened with Sebastian Moran and Sherlock will lose his position with the NYPD forever.

She trails half a step behind him onto the train and sits beside him, yawning and pulling out her phone.  There are five texts from Oren, each more and more excited.

The Mets had come back to win the game and she'd missed it.

"Fancy that," Sherlock says, reading (as always) over her shoulder.  "I put the odds of that happening at one-hundred to one.  You missed something rather extraordinary, it seems, Watson."

Joan turns her phone sideways and navigates to the highlights on ESPN's website.  It's not the same as watching the game, but she leans against Sherlock and offers him one headphone as together they watch the highlights of the game.

The train spirits them through the underground of New York, stations flashing by as the train rattles over the bridge and back into Brooklyn.  Night has fallen and the holiday city goers have left the city.  There's a lingering smell of gunpowder in the thick, humid air of the subway and above ground as they head back towards the brownstone.  Even now, at close to one thirty in the morning, it is uncomfortably warm.

And when Joan falls asleep, she doesn't dream of anything at all, Moriarty's book clutched between her fingers like the security blanket her father burned when she was five and deemed too old to hang onto such attachments.

-

When Sam Westin calls Jamie at an odd hour of the morning for one five hours behind London time, she picks up the phone immediately.  She's halfway through the crossword and has gone back to her painting in order to resist the urge to ask Collins if he has any idea what obscure sport culture reference this particular clue is making.  It's the key to the whole puzzle, and with this one word she'll be able to solve the rest of it effortlessly.

It's a shame she doesn't particularly care for American football, it has a violence about it that she can almost respect.  She remembers the ad campaign referenced in the clue from when she was very young, but she doesn't remember what 'Bo' was short for.

"It's rather late in the city, Mr. Westin, are you out celebrating with the Americans?"

He chuckles, the smile clearly evident in his voice.  "Unfortunately, no, mum. Our man at the city morgue just contacted me.  They've had a floater with PKE's mark on her come in and it looks like there could be more of them coming."

"Describe the body."  She puts her brush down and wipes the smear of burnt umber from her wrist on a cloth she's appropriated from a remnant of an old shirt.  A thousand strokes, she keeps telling herself, but she’s no closer to understanding.

"Female, Eastern European going off dental work, and she can't be more than twenty."  He pauses for a beat of time that's all Jamie needs to pull the phone from her ear and stare at the girl's face.  She looks impossibly young to be involved with the PKE Group, except as collateral or possibly as a whore.  The mark makes the latter more likely, but Jamie is fairly certain that PKE has never run girls before.  This is a new enterprise for them, or rather one that they’ve decided to no longer pursue. "He's taken the case."

Naturally, Jamie thinks.  She doesn't comment, because Westin knows her too well for her liking as it is.  In the six months since her departure from Newgate and the Sonny Park affair, Jamie’s spoken to him a handful of times.  She’s kept her distance and largely dealt with Sheng and Collins, she’s been burned by keeping her lieutenants too close one too many times, and she still bears the scars of those encounters, a daily reminder of what letting people get to close does.  "And his companion?"

Arrived late,” Westin supplies after a rustle of paper and half a second of contemplation.  He’s checking his notes, Jamie reasons, and she’s glad that he’s being so thorough.  “Something about a baseball game and her brother.”

"I can't imagine that those tickets came cheap, pity," Jamie muses.  She's standing before the canvas, a thousand strokes already this morning and an eye is emerging in warm brown and a back so deep that Jamie's sure her soul will be sucked into it if she stares for too long.  A thousand brush strokes to distract her from the mundanely of things like this.

She can't stomach that she's creating something, not simply copying for her own amusement.  And yet the urge to create, to make, pours out of her like water from a faucet untapped.  She cannot stop it, and all the little fingers she's tried to plug the holes with keep leading to new leaks. She has to find something to distract herself, because this is getting out of hand.

Her breadcrumbs have been studiously ignored, but the content of her gift has been embraced.  Jamie had known it would help, and she'd shoved the same book into Collins' hands in March and instructed him to read.  He's looked decidedly less melancholy after reading the book, and Jamie's glad.  A glum driver and body guard is something she simply cannot abide.

"If I may, mum," Westin says.  He sounds almost hesitant, and Jamie likes that.  The decision on how to proceed is her's and her's alone.  "There is a chance that the PKE Group might be liquidating their operation here the old fashioned way.  If so, wouldn't it be wise to ensure that they stop their process before Holmes and Watson end up loose ends?"

He’s overstepping, but he does have a point.

Jamie stares at her painting in its half-finished state.  She'd wanted to finish it before returning, a gift to tilt the odds in her favor.  Time is not, it seems, on her side.  She closes her eyes and sees the trajectory of this; it will end in calamity and death.  And while those are completely acceptable to Jamie under the right circumstances, she does not want that, and therefore it must be stopped.

"Find out everything you can," Jamie tells Westin.  "I want a name, Mr. Westin, and I want to know the extent of the operation that's being liquidated."  She opens her eyes and stares into the reflection of a soul she wants desperately but cannot possess.  They’re unfinished, warm and cruel and inviting and Jamie wants to own them.  She wants to tear them apart and see what’s inside, she wants and she wants and she wants.  She'd sworn to Sherlock, truthfully, that she never thought she'd create an original work.  She's apparently miscalculated.

Jamie sets her phone down beside her brushes and spins on one bare foot, toes almost sticking on the hardwood floor of her workspace.  "Mr. Collins, I need you to book a flight," she calls from the doorway to where he's absorbed in the newspaper football pages.  "We're going to New York."

And there's an almost joyous tone to her voice that makes Jamie want to curl up and pull herself apart as well.  She has to know why she wants this so badly, otherwise the game has no goal in mind.  She drifts back past the remains of her breakfast and the forgotten crossword, collecting it and a pen with one hand and scribbling in the answer as it comes to her.

_v-i-n-c-e-n-t_

Perhaps she doesn’t need Westin’s help finding the name after all.  Jamie tucks the half-completed puzzle into her purse and goes to collect her brushes.  They’ll need to be cleaned before she leaves.


	2. Can't Hide (Locked Inside My Mind)

The sun has barely risen when Sherlock bounds into Joan's bedroom the next morning, a gleeful smile on his face. Joan groans in the pre-dawn light and flops back onto her pillow.  She's gotten six hours of sleep, maybe, and she feels the bone weariness creep under her skin like the cold does in the winter.

"Up, Watson!" Sherlock says excitedly.  "I have made a discovery that just might crack this case."

It's six in the morning and Joan rolls over and pulls her pillow over her head.  Maybe if she doesn't move he'll think she's dead and go away.

He sits on the end of the bed, his leg bouncing just obnoxiously enough that Joan can feel the mattress and box spring wiggling incessantly.  "I was looking over the INS forms that Detective Bell was able to acquire for us last night, and I was thinking about what we were told last night by Donka.  I couldn't find a connection, so I cast the net wider, and started to look for unidentified bodies within the Tri-State area."

Joan eases herself up onto her elbows.  Her hair is already sticking to her forehead and the sheets are tangled around her waist.  It's hot and she's tired and grumpy and lucky to have not kicked off her sleep shorts in the middle of the night.  She doesn't think she can handle Sherlock and his excessive eyebrow wiggles at her underwear choices at this hour of the morning.  "What did you find?"

"There is cold coffee and fruit downstairs," Sherlock announces, bounding to his feet.  He pauses in her doorway, his hand closed around the door handle. "Come and see."

"Did you make the coffee fresh?" Joan calls after him as he closes the door with a bang.  There's no response, and Joan groans loudly, flopping back down onto the bed and scowling darkly at the cracked ceiling.

Ten minutes later Joan is holding a cold cup of coffee that Sherlock had indeed made sometime around three or so in the morning, if the coffee maker's timer is anything to go by.  It’s recent enough that Joan isn’t particularly grossed out by it, but it’s still weird to drink it.  At least it’s cold and the milk is fresh as of Tuesday. She presses her glass to her forehead and blinks owlishly in the early morning light.

There are five pictures of unidentified women printed out and arranged on top of one of Sherlock's maps of the Tri-State area.  Each has been killed by a similar series of circumstances - a sexual assault followed by a blunt trauma to the head and finally the disposal of the body into a body of water that would ensure that they would end up in different jurisdictions.  Sherlock's helpfully drawn the water currents onto the map.

"As you can see, there are now six bodies that fit this same pattern," Sherlock announces.  He's half-way through a piece of watermelon left over from when they grilled out on Wednesday, crunching on a seed loudly as he contemplates the map.  Joan braces herself and hopes to god he doesn’t spit it at her.  It is entirely too early in the morning for that level of childishness at him, and she doesn’t even have a watermelon slice of her own to properly counter his offensive.  "What do you see, Watson?"

The first thing Joan's tempted to say is a careful killer.  She's pretty sure that he's already thought of that.  She stares sleepily at the map and steps forward.  She runs a line with her fingers from where one of the bodies appeared on Staten Island towards the heart of the city, and then another.  The final line comes from Brighton Beach.  "We need to look somewhere in the middle of this web," she says after a moment's consideration.  She's thinking of the time that the respective medical examiners have estimated the bodies have spent in the water.  "And we also need to figure out where the bodies were dumped from.  IF we know that, we might be able to determine how they're being dumped."

"You think they might all have been dumped in the same place?"  Sherlock asks, frowning as he contemplates the map.  "It would explain the discrepancy in time spent in the river."

Joan nods.  "I think we need to speak to the officers in charge of these investigations as well.  Obviously they haven't been able to identify these girls - maybe we can get the case files and go from there?"

"I will call Bell, you go get dressed," Sherlock says after a moment's contemplation.  "I think we can work out the river's currents off of the Coast Guard's charts.  I'll collect those and we can go."

Joan nods and retreats into the kitchen where she chugs the entirety of her coffee. It tastes like ass when consumed this way, but the caffeine shot is enough to get her awake and she needs that desperately right now.  She doesn't think she's going to get a run in today, which is a shame, but she's almost grateful that Sherlock's woken her up.  It's always in the morning that her dreams turn dark.

**Can’t Hide (Locked Inside My Mind)**

The station is bustling with activity and Joan spends much of the morning remembering college physics and geometry.  Sherlock is on the phones with Marcus and Captain Gregson when they need him, requesting various case files and all relevant notes that they can get on the five Jane Does to go along with their Katia.

She plots the course of Katia's body first; going off of their estimation of how long she was in the water before washing up on Brighton Beach and placing a post it flag on the chart.  The next is the girl from Staten Island, in the water for longer, but still within the timeframe to be able to actually estimate her time of death.  Those two are the easy ones, and Joan smiles happily when she realizes that she had been correct.  It appears that both would have been put into the water within a pretty small area that the Coast Guard's charts indicate is mostly trafficked by the tugboats that help larger vessels get up the river to the ports beyond.

Sherlock has taken the theory and run with it, doing some amazing math in his head with regards to the other four bodies that have been found.  Joan had always known he was good with math, but to see him pull numbers that had taken her a good half hour of forcing herself to remember rates and currents and how the direction of the wind that day might have affected drift out of seemingly nowhere is enough to make her head spin.

He's picked up a sharpie and a ruler and is maneuvering it all over the map to locate the course of their suspected tug-boat killer.

"You know," Marcus comments, coming in with a stack of case files that have just been delivered by courier, "Some of the guys at One-P-P mock us for letting him get his hands all over our case files, but then he goes and does something like this and I just have to sit back and be damn impressed."

"It was Watson's idea, actually," Sherlock says, looking up from his red shaprie and slide rule.

Marcus glances over at Joan and grins at her.  "Nice," he says.

She smiles tiredly at him.

It's strange to think that not even two years ago, Sherlock would never actually praise another person, and she finds herself smiling bemusedly as he chatters happily at the pair of them as they go through the case files.

Soon though, the mood turns grim.  They have nothing, really, beyond a potential tug route that they need to get ahold of the incredibly busy Coast Guard to verify.  The harbor master's phone goes straight to a voicemail regarding the holiday weekend and Joan puffs out her cheeks and glances over at Marcus, who is elbow deep in toxicology reports.

Like Katia, on each of these girls there is evidence of Eastern European dentistry and poor nutrition.  Beyond that and the tattoo that they'd noticed on Katia, there's nothing.

Marcus finally gets an appointment with the harbor master for Sunday morning and Sherlock argues his way into making photocopies of the case files to take home.

It's two in the afternoon when they get back, tired, hungry and with no discernable leads.  "I'm going for a run," Joan announces when Sherlock says that he wants to get Indian for dinner.  The place that they favor takes a while to deliver, but also has larger portions than usual.  It's a tradeoff that Joan accepts readily, grateful that Sherlock also enjoys eating spicy food when it's hot out.

"Excellent, we can order when you get back."

-

The flight that Collins is able to find her leaves at five o'clock that afternoon, and Jamie spends much of her time before its departure preparing to leave London for the foreseeable future.  Collins is distracted, talking on his mobile at great length to Westin about the potential threat to the New York operation, and arranging a safe house in a hotel that Jamie’s company owns in the Bronx that she mostly uses to launder money.  It's far enough away from Brooklyn she thinks that she can escape the notice of Sherlock and Joan Watson if she's careful - and if she doesn't want to be noticed.

The problem, Jamie realizes as she passes her suitcase to Collins and climbs into the back of the waiting car, is that she wants to be noticed.  She wants to see if her little trail of breadcrumbs went un-followed for any reason other than the anger she justly deserves from the pair of them.

She doesn't think it's that though, and that's what intrigues her.  She looks at the endless echoes of her actions upon her leaving Newgate and all she can see are possibilities. She weighs the odds and tries to find the best possible outcome, but it does not come easily.  There are too many variables, and it would be easier, Jamie reasons, to see for herself.

The flight itself is painless.  She's flying under a passport and alias that are completely new to her, and this one is far closer to the truth than so many of the others.  She doesn't have to pretend to be American - or Russian for that matter - and she can smile and nod and breeze her way through customs in New York the way any other upper middle class rich heiress would.

Because all of those things are true, but Jamie never wanted her mother's money anyway.  She earns her own and locks her birthright away in accounts that she has never touched save to pay for university.

She flies business class because flying first class attracts too much attention and spends the flight reading the newspaper and trying to ignore the incredibly chatty woman she's stuck sitting next to.  She vows through gritted teeth that next time she does this flight, she's flying private.

"No," she says coolly, trying to appear fascinated by the crossword that she's pulled out of her purse.  "I hadn't thought of that as a clue."

Mrs. Brinkley-Smith is rather good at crosswords and is providing helpful tips over Jamie's shoulder and Jamie's already contemplating how best to remove her from the plane without attracting attention.  She fills in the answer that Mrs. Brinkley-Smith has provided and folds the crossword back up and tucks it away.  She'll do it later when annoying middle aged society women are not looking over her shoulder.

"What did you say you did?" Mrs. Brinkley-Smith asks after Jamie settles back to stare sullenly at the seat back in front of her, her arms folded across her chest.

Jamie turns to look at her then, fingers drumming on the armrest as her whole body shifts towards the woman.  "I didn't," she says testily.  Jamie has worked most of her adult life to be able to school her features perfectly neutral and impassive, but there are times when she decides to allow her emotions to show.  Her face can turn on an instant, from pleasant (if politely disinterested) into a maelstrom of malcontent.  She lets her distaste for Mrs. Brinkley-Smith show through, and she can see how the woman backs away from Jamie's curled lip and hateful expression.  Good, she should be scared.  Jamie counts four ways she could die without it being detected by the flight crew or the air marshal at the back of the plane.  She lets the scowl fall from her lips and smiles charmingly once more, "And I don't foresee there being much sleep in my future, so if you don't mind..."

Mrs. Brinkley-Smith wisely closes her mouth and doesn't bother Jamie again until she accidentally elbows her just as they're preparing to land at JFK.  Jamie had been drifted between wakefulness and dreams, not quite able to slip into sleep even with Collins one row back and a full security check of the passenger manifest.  Sleep does not come easily to Jamie as it is, and a fairly normal plane at an odd hour of the day is sure to ensure that she never falls asleep.

It is noon when they land and Jamie's mind feels sluggish as she greets Westin and stands aside as he claps Collins' hand and then pulls him into a one armed hug, a smile on his face.

"You've grown a mustache, Mr. Westin," Jamie comments as they wait for their luggage at baggage claim.  It's a weak one, all wispy black hair on his tan skin.  She supposes that his heritage probably puts a damper on his ability to grow something more substantial.  She inclines her head to one side and then smiles slyly at him.  "I like it."

"Thank you," he says as Collins chuckles behind his hand.  "Shelly likes it too," he says, mostly for Collins' benefit. They are friends, after all, even if Jamie's tried her best to discourage such a relationship between them.

"How's she doing?" Collins asks, rubbing at the back of his neck.  He's so much taller than either of them that they look a little comical next to him.  Westin is Jamie's height, maybe an inch or two taller, but Collins is well over six feet tall.  When Jamie had first met him, she'd joked that he would have made a good footballer, had he chosen to go into sport instead of the military and subsequently mercenary work.

"Same old, same old.  She's on a different rotation at the hospital now, so that's good.  See more of 'er," Westin replies.

"Ah," Collins says.  He leans forward and grabs both how own beat-up Nike duffle and Jamie's far nicer suitcase.  "Shall we?" he asks.

Jamie nods and lets Westin lead the way out of the terminal and to a car that is as nondescript as any.  A third man that Jamie doesn't recognize stands beside it, his hands behind his back and his expression severe.  He nods once to Westin, who climbs into the driver's seat, and walks away towards another waiting car.

"The PKE Group have hired Camille Vincent," Westin explains, handing Jamie a dossier over the back of driver's seat.  "I thought it'd be safer to have someone watch the car while I went in to fetch you."

"Quite," Jamie agrees, pulling open the folder and pulling out the intel that Westin has been able to produce.

She had been right in her guess as to why the PKE Group would hire to liquidate their New York assets.  Camille Vincent, French national and semi-professional sailor who'd won, but declined a spot on the French National team during the Beijing Olympics.

"Why does it have to be boats," Jamie mutters to herself.  Vincent is the sort of killer that Jamie loathes to work with.  She is entirely too willful and does exactly what she wishes, even if the plan calls for other actions.  Its lead to Jamie having to grease more palms and cost her far more money than Vincent's expertise is worth.  However, with Moran out of the picture, she is the best person for this job.

Collins and Westin are chatting amicably in the front seat, and Jamie leans over and rolls up the privacy screen to read in peace.

It's only when they happen past the park where Joan Watson, a creature of habit and routine, runs through on a daily basis that Jamie pushes the privacy screen down.  There's a cafe just around the corner from here, and given what Westin has been able to ascertain regarding the investigation into the most recent murder by Sherlock and Watson, there is a fairly high likelihood that Jamie might chance upon her downfall.

She instructs them to go around the block and get some rest.  She will be perfectly safe, she explains.  Westin's provided her with a gun, after all.  "I will call if I need you," she promises her concerned-looking bodyguards and shoos them on their way.

Her body aches, and the sun is up when it should have set.  Her internal clock is thrown off and she buys herself a sandwich and a bottle of water.  After a moment's consideration, she adds a second one to her order and takes her wax-paper wrapped sandwich and heads across the street into the park, dossier on Camille Vincent tucked under one arm.  She finds a table that will be tucked away, but in plain view of the route that runners seem to favor.

It's now just a matter of waiting, and Jamie Moriarty can be as patient as a spider when she needs to be, waiting for a beautiful fly to become ensnared in her web.

-

It is impossibly hot out, but Joan runs anyway, her feet pounding her way south towards the water and then twisting up along the river until she's cutting through what is probably her favorite part of living in Brooklyn.  The view of Manhattan across the river is spectacular, and she drinks it in, grateful for the mental exhaustion that running affords her when it's this hot out.  She can't think of anything but putting one foot in front of the other, going as far as she dares before turning around and maintaining the same pace or better going back.

The hot, foul smelling air that wafts off of the river as a garbage barge slowly floats by is enough to make her gag and she half-stumbles to a halt in the middle of the park, hands on her knees and breathing deeply through her mouth.  She's forgone music, hoping to be able to think and forgetting that in this heat, thought while running is impossible.

She's cramping, just a little bit, and stretches her arms over her head, pulling at stubborn stomach muscles that insist on being problematic in this heat.  Reach up, hold, walking a circle with her hands knotted behind her head and her breathing slow and steady, Joan notices a figure sitting at one of the seldom-used tables under the shade of a few tall and sturdy-looking trees.

A figure that she recognizes.

Her stomach plummets to somewhere around her ankles and she lets her arms drop to her sides.  She's still breathless, but she can feel those calculating eyes on her and her skin crawls.

She's left her phone plugged into the charger next to Sherlock's computer, not thinking that she was going to need it.

Joan tugs one headphone from her ear, the sounds of the park and the city echoing loudly all around her.  It’d been strange to run with them in, but no music playing, but she’d found she didn’t mind it after a while, it gave her time to think.  She considers, just for a moment, running back home and telling Sherlock what she's seen.  They can call the police then; they can get her put away for good.

But she'll be gone by the time Joan runs all the way back home, and they won't know why she's here.

There really is no better option.

Joan jogs over to the table, staying just beyond the shadow of the trees.

"Hello, Joan," Moriarty says.  She's dressed in white and looks slightly rumpled and definitely tired.  Inside the breast pocket of her shirt, Joan can see an airline ticket stub.  She's just flown in then.  Joan's eyes narrow.

She still sounds out of breath, but the shade does wonders to cool her down.  Joan steps into the circle of darkness that seems to have surrounded Moriarty beneath these trees.  "What are you doing here?" she asks.

Moriarty looks up from where she's sitting, a sandwich half-finished on wax paper beside her.  There's a half-finished crossword before her, and a stack of papers inside a leather portfolio.  "Truthfully? I am enjoying being out of doors.  I've been up half the night, stuck on a plane next to an extraordinarily chatty woman.  The quiet is wonderful."

Joan glances at the time on her battered old iPod, she’d brought it along even though she hadn’t planned on using it.  It’s like a security blanket for her now, even if she’ll never admit it to anyone.  "It's two thirty."

She inclines her head to one side, hair falling over one shoulder.  "Not where I've been, dear Watson.  I don't foresee there being much sleep in my future, either."  She reaches down and pulls a bottle of water from the bag beside her.  "Here," she says.  "You'll get dehydrated, running around in this heat."

Joan catches the bottle as it is tossed to her and holds it, fingers slipping on the dew.  There's a receipt stuck to it, and she pulls it off, noting the deli just across the street's address and the fact that cash was used to pay for it.  "Why are you here?" she asks again, this time more forcefully.  She twists the bottle open and inspects the cap.  It doesn't look as though it's been tampered with and she was going to get a bottle of water from somewhere anyway.  Might as well save the two bucks on a murder’s charity. 

"Really Watson, sit, you look half dead," Moriarty picks up the remains of her sandwich and crumples them into a ball, tossing them almost expertly into the trash can on the other side of the walkway.  It lands dead center and Joan's eyebrows go up.

"Nice shot," she says, and slides down into the seat across the table from Moriarty.

"Thank you," she says, bending and pulling another bottle of water from the bag.  She sets it before her on the rickety metal table and turns to look at Joan.  Joan shifts under the gaze and wonders if she's done the right thing to linger and to even come up and say hello.

Joan watches her carefully for a moment, before pressing the bottle against her forehead.  "Why are you back here?  You're not exactly a free woman," she asks.  It's a reasonable question, she figures.  She knows how Moriarty can get, her ego ruling her and almost leading to her over-sharing.  There are so many things that Joan wants to ask her.  Like why she'd sent that book, or if she'd known what sort of effect it'd have on Joan.

"Oh come now Watson, you're as bad as he is, so full of questions," Moriarty is squinting in the dim light of their shady spot.  "Not every gesture is a poison barb set to slowly ruin your life."

It's easy then, to glare at Moriarty, accusatory and defiant of her nonchalance.  "You killed Nigel Peddicort."

And Moriarty looks almost bored at the accusation.  "I had wondered if that would escape his notice.  Pity, it wasn't my best work."

"You're a monster."

"Hardly," Moriarty twists open her own water bottle and takes an almost irritatingly dainty sip from it.  Everything about her is a contradiction, and Joan hates that so much of that is put on.  Moriarty isn’t dainty; she isn’t a nice, friendly person like she’s acting now.  Joan knows this, and yet here they are, putting on airs for each other.  "Peddicort had been warned and he defied my wishes.  I dealt with him in a way that his associates would understand.  It was his idea to hire Sonny Park, after all.  I would have thought..."

Irritation floods through Joan and she scowls at the perfectly impassive face across from her.  How she doesn’t even look hot in this heat is beyond Joan and something snaps within her in that moment.  "You thought what?  That I'd take it like I would a cat leaving me a dead bird on my doorstep?  Seriously, Ire-"

"Call me Jamie, Watson; it is my name after all."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that level of familiarly," Joan retorts, because she honestly isn’t and Moriarty probably knows that already. 

Moriarty shrugs.  "Do what you will, certainly, but I'm not Irene, Watson.  She has truth in her, all the best lies do, but she's a poor substitute for the real thing."  She smiles wickedly then, all teeth and malicious intent behind her eyes.  Beyond that, however, Joan can see a genuine curiosity, the same curiosity that she sometimes catches on Sherlock's face when he thinks she's not looking.  It’s a look she’s come to take as something of a compliment, she’s flummoxed him, or however he’ll put it.  She wonders if it’s the same with Moriarty, or if the look means something else, something baser and nastier.  She hopes not, but she can’t exactly put what she thinks it means into words just yet.  She has to gather more facts before she’s willing to take a gander at what it could possibly mean.

They sit in silence for a moment that seems to stretch on forever.  A quiet breeze rustles the trees overhead and Moriarty casts a glance around the clearing before speaking once more.  Joan reasons that she wouldn’t be here if she was actually nervous about being overheard, so she’s trying to play it off all cloak and dagger-like. Her eyes narrow, because if Moriarty thinks that she’s fooling _anyone_ with that act, she’s sorely mistaken. 

"Your case right now..." Moriarty taps the leather portfolio on the table and Joan glances at it.  Pages are poking out of the top of it that looks suspiciously like Marcus’ incident report from yesterday morning. Really, Joan doesn’t know why she’s surprised at all; it almost figures that she'd have access to their case files.  "I fear that you both have thrown yourselves into the path of Mr. Peddicort's cohorts' dissolution of their New York operation.  They've hired a particularly nasty piece of work to do it, something of a loose cannon, you see.  Doesn’t like following orders.  Prefers water killings and boats."

The bodies in the river.  Joan nods once, knowing that there's no sense in lying to Moriarty when she obviously already knows far more than the average citizen should about an active investigation.  "Why tell me this?" Joan asks, noting how careful Moriarty has been to not reveal the killer's name or even gender.  Usually Moriarty bandies about names like they’re a sort of currency for her.  If what they’d managed to uncover of her operation before her escape from Newgate is anything to go on, names and blackmail are a far larger part of Moriarty’s organization than murder for hire or whatever other nefarious plots they get up to.  Joan wonders if this omission is intentional or not.  She doesn't want to know the name, personally.  She knows they can find it on their own.

"I want to," Moriarty explains simply with a disinterested shrug.  She tucks the page back into the folio and tilts her head to the side, watching Joan through half-closed eyes.  She looks exhausted, and Joan can see that the dark circles under her eyes cannot quite be covered up by the make-up she’s put on.   "Your catching them in the act saves me them the trouble of arranging their death."

Joan sets down the water bottle on the table before her and crosses her arms, defiantly sticking out her chin.  "We're not your lackeys, Moriarty."  And she won’t say _Jamie_ because fuck if that isn’t a totally pedestrian and innocuous name for someone who is a lot more complicated than a simple, girlish name. 

"No, but it is a mutual interest, is it not?"  She stares hard at Joan, who tries to return the gesture. It's hard, though, to look at this woman and keep her face as neutral as Moriarty.  Joan wants to glare at her, to demand answers to questions she can't quite put into words.  Why help them, why come back here?  Why risk everything to come back and return lock picks of all god-forsaken things? Why do all of these things that seem like gestures of friendship and affection?

Why press her lips to Joan's cheek and why does it bother Joan so much that she's done it?

Moriarty lets out a tiny puff of air, a quiet pop of sound that is just barely audible over the sounds of the city all around them.  Joan finds herself rocking forward, both feet in sneakers planted firmly on the sun-bleached ground.  She wants to know Moriarty's justification for doing this, even if it's hidden behind grand gestures and lies that fall off of her tongue as easily as they did the serpent’s. "Mr. Peddicort and his cohorts deal in girls, drugs, counterfeit goods, things of that nature.  I do not.  The only reason I am even remotely interested in them is because of you, my dear Watson.  Sonny Park was hired by them, you see, and through their own considerable lack of foresight, he targeted you."

And that makes Moriarty angry, apparently.  Joan lets a single eyebrow rise, knowing that she cannot downplay how impactful Sonny Park's actions have been on her life - or how she's spent the better part of six months in and out of depositions and court rooms.  How she's told her story so many times that it almost feels rehearsed now - how Moriarty's involvement in her rescue has never come up.

"And I take it that that offends some sort of criminal code you hold yourself to?" she asks.  She reaches for the water again just to give her hands something to do.  She's afraid that they'll clench into nervous fists, never quite able to come down from the runner's high and then the adrenaline-fueled panic of facing this woman once more.

"I only have one rule for this city, follow it and I will let enterprises other than my own operate here without hindrance," Moriarty begins.  Her hands are clasped in her lap, curled around a cell phone whose screen is black and cold.  No one's trying to contact her, but she's clinging to it like it's a lifeline.  Joan wants to ask why, but she doesn't dare.

"What?  Don’t piss you off?"

She's see what Moriarty can do when she's angry and she doesn't think she wants to ever be on the receiving end of it.

Moriarty laughs then, and it's a warm sort of a laugh that Joan wasn't expecting.  She supposes she was envisioning something like the cruel villains of the novels she's read to young patients in the quiet moments on hospital wards during her Pediatrics rotations.  High and cold and cruel is what she's expected, not warm and almost friendly sounding, even if there's no mirth hidden behind Moriarty's icy stare.  "Really, Watson, do you find me that petty?"  She shakes her head, "No, the rule is that you and Sherlock are not to be harmed. Respect that rule and there will be no problems; break it and well, let's just say that Mr. Park got off easy."

And it's in that that moment that whatever peace there was between them breaks.  Joan inclines her head to one side, staring hard at this woman - this Jamie Moriarty and wondering if she's truly reading this situation correctly.  She doesn't feel as though she is, and she wants to run, to get the hell away from this polite admission of murder and torture all because Joan herself was in danger.  She doesn't like it.  It makes her feel almost like a kept woman.

She pushes herself to her feet and takes the now empty water bottle in hand and finally brings herself to say something.  "You've cut your hair," she says, crossing over to the trash can and throwing the empty bottle away.  "It... It looks nice."   She turns then, headphones shoved into her ears and volume turned up to eleven. She doesn’t want to hear or even think of Moriarty staring after her, eyes boring holes into her back.

-

Sherlock is on the roof, tending his bees when Joan gets home.  He takes in her sweaty appearance and the fact that she hasn't made a b-line for the shower and frowns, setting his tools aside and tugging off the mesh helmet he's wearing.  "What's happened?" he asks.

Joan stays away from the bees.  Not because she doesn't like them, she does, but the apiary is Sherlock's thing and she's afraid that she'll upset the delicate balance that he's worked so hard to achieve with them.  "You'll never guess who's back in town," she says.

She studies his face the, because there can only ever be one 'who' with Sherlock Holmes.  She thinks it will always be this way, because they're trying to feel their way around their post-sexual relationship and Joan's convinced he's still in love with the idea of Irene Adler, gone as she is into the black vortex of Moriarty.

He slumps down against the wall, his netting covered hat in his head. The crinkly material of his beekeeper's suit is enough to drown out the sound of the quiet hiss of what Joan hopes isn't an admission of emotional pain. "She didn't threaten you or follow you, did she?"

She shakes her head.  "No, she just happened to be at the midpoint of my run.  She'd just flown in, had a ticket stub in her pocket, it wasn't in her name."

"How could you tell?" he asks, curiously.

"It wasn't a particularly heavy top," Joan replies.  "The fabric was white and fairly transparent."  Not that she was paying attention or anything...

Joan bites her lip.  "She mentioned our case, and confirmed your suspicious that she'd killed Nigel Peddicort."  She sighs and moves to sit next to Sherlock.  "She seemed to think that I'd... be happy that he was dead."

"He was the one who hired Sonny Park, then," Sherlock says, and Joan doesn't bother to ask how he knows enough about the situation to make that assumption.  It probably goes back to whatever was discussed between them during the time when Joan was with Park, yet another thing that Joan cannot pretend to understand about their relationship and all its unhealthy twists and turns.    "It figures then, that she'd think you'd be pleased.  She eliminated a person who threatened you."

"I don't want her to play my avenging angel, Sherlock," Joan says, looking away and across the roof.  She already doesn't know why Moriarty is so interested in her, or why she's been so willing to help where Joan's concerned.  It doesn't make any sense and Joan doesn't like it.  She doesn't like how the book has helped her cope so much, or how she's kept that stupid sketch.  "I can save myself."

It's a lie, and not a very good one.  Joan knows better to try and pull the wool over Sherlock's eyes about this too.  She just doesn't want him to think she's still trying to chase the nightmares away.

She shakes her head to clear it.  This isn't the time.  "Besides, she actually mentioned something interesting.  Probably deliberately to make sure that we looked into it."

"Probably," Sherlock agrees.

Joan tells him of Moriarty's comments about the killer and how careful she was to not reveal the killer's name or gender, despite obviously knowing both.  Joan wants to say that it points to the killer being a woman, because so many are men that the women seem to slip by unnoticed, like Moriarty herself.  Avoidance, even unconsciously, can still be an admission of guilt. 

"So the PKE Group is liquidating their assets in New York..." Sherlock murmurs, scratching at his chin.  "And we have the same information as before, only now with a word of caution from a murderer.  This is starting to feel like the Sonny Park case all over again, Watson.  I'd appreciate it if you didn't go running alone again until it's resolved."

That she can do.  She doesn’t think she wants to be running into Moriarty in any more parks anyway.  While she's sure that if Moriarty wants to talk to them she'll find away, Joan would rather keep her distance.  She knows that they could catch her again, that she could bring the woman and her vast empire to her knees, but she doesn't want to do that to Sherlock.

And she sort of does owe her, at least on some level, for Sonny Park.

"The way that Moriarty talked about how the PKE Group was running girls.  She said it so offhandedly, but I wonder if she was trying to imply that there were others who might still be alive..."  Joan tugs her hair from the high pony tail that she usually puts it in to run and runs a distracted hand along her itchy scalp.  She needs to shower, she's gross and sweaty and Sherlock, naturally, doesn't seem to mind at all.

"Then we must hurry," Sherlock says, getting to his feet.  "You need to shower and change.  The food should be here shortly, I called about half an hour ago.  We can take it with us down to the precinct.  I want to look at the first case file we worked where the PKE Group was involved; I keep thinking we're missing something..."

The delivery guy has come and left by the time Joan gets out of the shower, clean and dressed some twenty minutes later.  Joan shoves on sandals because it is too hot for boots, and follows him out the door, taking the takeout bag from him as he turns to lock up.  Joan watches as he bends and shoves a scrap of folded up cardstock underneath the door.

"Why do that?" Joan asks as he takes the food back from her and starts down the steps.  He pauses then, glancing down at his scuffed oxfords.

"We have an acquaintance in town who likes to let herself into places where she shouldn't be. Think of it at as a precaution, to ensure that if she does decide to rifle through our things, we'll know about it," he explains.  There's a look about him that to Joan almost makes him look like a petulant child.  It's almost as if he suspects that she might disapprove, when she truly does not. 

The most logical option is to smile and nod, because she does understand that, and understands it intimately.  Moriarty had let herself right into Joan's bedroom, after all, and Joan's still trying to wrap her head around just how she feels about that.  "Smart," she says.

The book that she's tucked into her purse weighs heavily on her mind as they walk to the precinct, and when they get there, Joan takes her tandoori chicken and sits off to the side of the conference room they've appropriated for the case while Sherlock disappears downstairs to argue with the records clerk for the Jack Renard case file.

Joan doesn't understand it, why Moriarty is able to offer something so completely and utterly inconsequential to her and why it's been able to do so much to help Joan try and wrap her head around what's happened to her.  She knows now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Moriarty does want to play the role of Joan's avenging angel on some level.  The idea makes her uncomfortable, because she hates the implication that she cannot fight her battles on her own.

That's the problem with Moriarty, Joan reasons, closing the book and setting it aside.  Moriarty trades on assumptions and secrets, on stereotypes and everything that Joan has spent her entire like trying very hard not to be.  Now though, it seems that she's fixated, and Joan doesn't know how to divert her attention elsewhere.  Or if she even wants to.  She likes it, on some base level, knowing that she’s confused Moriarty. And she hates that she does.

The thought that she might not want it elsewhere, because elsewhere would mean that it was back on Sherlock, on killing people and doing illegal things.  Joan doesn't want that either.  It's a terrible position to be in, and she doesn't think that anyone would understand her plight, should she try and explain it to them.  Sherlock, at least, seems unconcerned by Moriarty's interest.

They'd reached some sort of an understanding, during the Sonny Park case.  That much has been obvious to Joan since December, but it's the little things that Sherlock's taken to ignoring now that Joan isn't quite sure about.  It’s almost as though he knows that Moriarty won’t hurt her, so as long as the relationship stays on the same footing, Sherlock has no reason to fear for her safety – at least where Moriarty is concerned.

Sherlock comes in then, and he sees the book on the corner of the table.  Joan watches as his lips draw into a thin line, and she chews and stabs her fork back into the take-out container thoughtfully before picking it up and tucking it away, back into her purse and out of sight.

"She'll find it flattering that you carry it around with you," Sherlock points out, as if Joan needed a reminder of the truly epic size of Moriarty's ego.

Joan shrugs and reaches for the case file he passes her.  She's not going to rise to his bait, even though there's a large part of her that wants to hash and rehash the conversation in the park from earlier.  To go over every single detail of that conversation until Joan is absolutely positive that she's parsed out any and all of the hidden meanings in Moriarty's words.

There will be a time and a place for that, but if Moriarty had been right, and there are other girls still living, then they have an obligation to try and save them.  That's why they're in this line of work, after all.

Back in October, Joan and Sherlock had stumbled upon who they'd thought to be a high-end, but rather foolish counterfeiter while looking into something else.  The case itself had been fairly open and shut, Jacques Renard, who went by Jack on the street, was selling counterfeit iPhones and iPods on the street.  Someone had gotten killed over a faulty text message sent from one of the phones and they'd been following up on one of what had been many needle-in-a-haystack leads.

Joan flips the paper over, staring down at the picture of Jack Renard, his eyes sunken deep into his skull and the longer, wispy gray hair styled in such a way that it told her that he was European, rather than American.  They still didn’t have much on him, and the French government was trying to negotiate his release to their soil to serve his trial and prison term there.

"Honestly, if we hadn't been told of the connection, I wouldn't have guessed that Renard was working for the PKE Group at all," Joan mutters, flipping over the list of known aliases and contacts.

There are a few names that she recognizes, alibis that he'd attempted to use when they'd brought him in for questioning, but mostly it's just family members.  "There's a girlfriend, her name is really familiar, I can't place it though."

Sherlock stabs a piece of her chicken and pops it in his mouth, peering over her shoulder.  Joan backs away a little bit, eyebrows raised because he's chewing in her ear and really, it's hugely rude, not to mention incredibly gross.  "That is because," he says, swallowing.  "She is somewhat famous, Watson.  Famous for all the wrong sort of reasons."

That has Joan thinking of celebrity sex tapes and the girls from _Jersey Shore_ , which she’s pretty sure isn’t what he means.  "Who is she?"  Joan asks, staring down at the name and trying to place it.  She remembers that it was a few years ago now that she'd first heard it, but what was happening then?  She honestly couldn't remember, her life had been blowing up at that particular moment in all the worst possible ways. 

Sherlock hands her his phone, flicking the screen to enlarge what he's looked up.  Joan's eyes scan a headline.  ‘ _Vincent Turns Down Offer for Place on French National Team_ ,’ it reads.  Joan frowns.  "She turned down a spot on the Olympic sailing team?"  It seems like a pretty stupid reason to become famous in Joan’s opinion. 

"Yes," Sherlock says, flipping the page over and eating another piece of Joan's chicken.  Joan swats at his hand and glares until he puts the fork back.  "I rather think that that kind of fame would have put a damper on Ms. Vincent's other calling..."

He's got a second file with him, which means that he'd already figured this out.  Joan scowls and takes the file from him, annoyed that she hadn't picked up on the fact that he'd already put some of this together on his own and is now spinning threads of deductions and theory into an actual working narrative of the murders thus far.  "Why don't you tell me when you have these eureka moments?" she mutters, flipping open the file and staring down at the scowling face of Shonda Vincent, French National.

"It's a test," Sherlock replies, stabbing another piece of chicken with his own fork and grinning roguishly at her.  She scowls at him as he pops it into his mouth.  "To see how long it takes for you to reach the same conclusion."

Joan resists the urge to tell him that she'll show him a conclusion, but merely rolls her eyes and goes back to reading the woman's rap sheet.  "She doesn't seem particularly dangerous, they've only got her on parking tickets and one drunk and disorderly.  Hardly seems like a serial killer," She hands back the file, takes her chicken and holds it close, fork in hand.  She'll fight him for the rest of it.

He gets up then, and crosses to the board where Marcus or maybe one of the other detectives has hung up her map of the ocean currents.  Next to it is what looks like a printed list.  "While you were out running earlier, gallivanting with criminals, Detective Bell texted me to say that the harbor master had finally gotten around to sending him something of a detailed list of boats in that part of the water that were actually licensed to be there."

"It's the Fourth of July, Sherlock, everyone who has a boat is drunk and out on the water in it."

"And that, my dear Watson, is where you are wrong," Sherlock explains, handing her a page from the list.  It isn't for this weekend, but rather the weekend when the second body washed up in Jersey City in the middle of March.  There are only a few names on the list, including Vincent's.

"Why was she sailing in the middle of March?"  Joan wonders, looking at the list and noting the time.  "It's super dangerous to go into the harbor in the winter in a small boat. And I think some of the post 9-11 rules make it next to impossible."

Joan doesn't like that the evidence is based almost completely on her knowledge of physics and geometry, but she's willing to take a gander.  "We should tell Marcus that we've got a lead he might actually be able to follow up on," she says to Sherlock.  He makes a move for another piece of chicken.  "And stop, this is mine, go eat yours.  Next time order some if you want it so badly."

He doesn't stick his tongue out at her, but it's a close thing.

-

Westin has botched this; Jamie knows it from the start, just looking at the paperwork.  She's sitting cross-legged on her hotel bed, the papers that Westin's left her spread out around her in an arc, trying to see where it's all gone wrong.  She's trusted Westin to handle things like this before, and he's always done an adequate job, but between him and Collins, it seems that quality has slipped.  Things are sloppy, there are loose ends.  Jamie grinds her teeth and starts to make a mental list of everything she’s going to have to take care of to put this right.

It had been her initial assumption, when she’d killed Nigel Peddicort that the PKE Group and their leadership would understand the risks and simply leave New York.  She didn't - and still doesn't - understand their actions regarding their girls.  They’re disposable, sellable even if they know the right people, and she’s sure that someone within the PKE Group does know the right sort of people for that. 

Hiring an assassin, especially one of Camille Vincent's caliber, to remove them is overkill.  They should know that.  They should know better.  It doesn't make sense.

Jamie taps her pencil on the back of the police file that Westin's obtained.  No, there's something else to this, something bigger.  The girls are just an added bonus, or perhaps even a distraction. 

When it hits her, Jamie sits up straight and frowns, picking up the shipping manifest for the harbor.  There's no way that the PKE group would be that brazen, and yet it's the only thing that makes sense.  They were never after the girls in the first place, it must be that, they were after someone else. 

She recalls her boast to Joan Watson earlier, the broad claim that the one rule of the city was that they were to be left alone.  There were others, ones that Watson didn’t need to know, and the chief among them was just as Watson had said.  Making her angry was not a good idea, even if the signs had all been missed by one of Jamie’s own people. 

Vincent is after them, probably misplaced retribution for Peddicort’s death.  Jamie lets out a low curse and pushes herself upright.  The floor is cool under her toes and she straightens on unsteady feet.  She’s so, so impossibly tired, but she knows that she has to see this one last thing through, to tell them what she knows before it is indeed too late.

_The dead bodies have been a decoy_ , Jamie thinks, pulling a clean shirt over her head and trying not to look too hard at the haggard looking woman who stares back at her from the hotel room’s bathroom mirror.  She can sleep later.  The real show has yet to come.

-

Marcus doesn’t bite on their lead, not just yet anyway.

"I want to speak to the harbor master and see what the canvas of boats in the harbor turns up.  Someone was bound to be out there and must have seen something, especially because Katia wasn't in the water all that long." He explains, hands on his hips and looking far too warm in his full suit as they stand outside in the too-warm evening air.  "We have a meeting with the harbor master tomorrow at seven," he goes on, and Joan winces.  Sherlock rests a comforting hand on her back.  "So once we do that, we can maybe find something to prove her boat was there.  I’m passing it around with the picture of our DB. With the holiday… though, it’s a bit of a needle in a haystack."

He leaves them there, outside the precinct, and head back inside.  Joan shoves her hands in her pants pockets and glances over at Sherlock.  "What do we do now, then?" she asks

"We could go pay Ms. Vincent a visit," Sherlock says, scratching at his chin.  "We could tell her anything, really.  Say we're looking at another case her ex-boyfriend was involved in."

"Wouldn't that tip her off?" Joan asks, her expression thoughtful.  It could be a disaster waiting to happen.  Marcus is right after all, they really don't have anything other than wild conjecture at this point in time.  It’s clear to Joan, sometimes; that the thing Sherlock hates most of all about police work is the _waiting_.  He cannot abide by the time it takes the process to do its bit at times, and he’ll sometimes jump the gun because of it.  He’s lost cases that way, criminals have gotten away.  Joan knows he doesn’t want that to happen this time, he has to.

He looks as though he wants to argue, but his expression calms, and Joan realizes that he knows she has a point.  "I cannot stop thinking about what Donka said yesterday," he confesses.  His expression is unreadable, closed off and completely distant.  Joan doesn’t like it when she can’t read him, it makes her want to urge him to go to meetings and tell her what’s bothering him.  "The idea of being tricked into something like what Katia – what any of those girls - surly endured is horrifying to me."

"Then we should get some rest tonight," Joan replies, a tired hand running through her hair.  It's far too hot to be thinking this hard about anything.  "So we can be well-rested in the morning."

What she doesn't say is probably what they're both thinking.  Moriarty is in town, and neither of them are going to get any sleep tonight.  This case is too connected to her, and they both know it.  If Shonda Vincent truly is the killer of all those girls then they have bigger problems than Moriarty.

The air is starting to feel a bit cooler by the time they get back home, Joan trailing half a step behind Sherlock as they both climb the steps towards the door.  Sherlock's digging his keys from his pocket and Joan's pulling her book and cell phone from her purse distractedly when his shoe comes into contact with a small, white folded up piece of paper.

He looks down at it, for a moment, keys hanging loosely between his thumb and forefinger.

"It appears," he says, bending to pick it up, "That we will both be consorting with criminals today, Watson."

Joan puts the book back into her purse and zips it shut.

She doesn't know why she does it, and doesn't bother to ponder it now.  Her expression is stony as Sherlock opens the door and steps inside, careful to only step in front of Joan, his body shielding her.  Joan knows that it’s not a conscious decision, and she’s grateful that he’s protective of her at the same time as wanting to do the same for him.  She knows that this is how their dynamic works, how it has to work. They are partners, equals in all things, even if she is still learning Sherlock’s craft. 

"You've been gone a while," comes a voice from the living room.  A black silhouette is standing in the window, framed in the light from the streetlamps outside.  Sherlock flicks the light on, and Joan peers over his shoulder.  Moriarty is standing in the middle of the room, her arms crossed over her chest and looking incredibly put out.  "I was starting to worry."


	3. you hold the key (locked up inside yourself)

It had not been Jamie's intention to see Sherlock during this trip to New York, but circumstances, as they are wont to do, change.  She stood in the middle of the front room of the brownstone, scowling at the neat lines of books.  Sherlock and Watson both were standing in the foyer, looking a bit shocked that she'd actually dared to show her face here, but she supposed that it was sort of a matter of principle.

"And was there a particular reason for you to darken our doorway this evening?" Sherlock asks.  He's almost mirrored Jamie's stance, while Watson has scooted around him to come fully into the room.  She stands between them, and Jamie watches her, curious as to what she's going to do.  "Your message, convoluted as it was, was received loud and clear without you personally delivering it."

Jamie lets herself relax, uncrossing her arms and plunging her hands into her pockets.  The bag with Westin's notes slung over one shoulder knocking idly against her leg. "I am not usually one to accuse my people of gross incompetence," Sherlock lets out an annoyed noise and pinches the bridge of his nose.  Jamie smiles, because he's forever predictable.

"I'm going to start some coffee," Watson says, and Jamie glances over to see that she's discarded her jacket over the back of the sofa and has pulled her phone from her purse.  There's a flash of something else inside her purse, and Jamie's eyes narrow as she tries not to look too obviously.

The book that she'd sent on a whim.

Strange, she'd thought that Watson would have discarded it.  Instead it seems as though she treasures the book, and Jamie isn't sure what to make of that.

It isn't that she hadn't thought that it would help, but rather that she didn't think of Joan Watson as the sort who would allow it to.  Jamie shakes her head and smiles as sweetly as she can at Watson.  "Thank you," she says, because she is exhausted and she doesn't foresee there being much in the way of sleep in her future.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the police and tell them that there's a fugitive standing in my living room," Sherlock says as Watson disappears off into the kitchen.  Jamie scowls at him, wishing he wasn't so hostile.  She's made him that way, even if it was largely his own doing.

"By now, I'm sure your investigation has led you back to the first interaction that you and Watson had with the PKE Group," Jamie begins.  She crosses over to the sofa and sits on the edge of it.  She tugs the police file and Weston's own notes from her bag before glancing up to see that Sherlock has come to stand before her, rocking on the balls of his feet.

He nods, not looking at her, his eyes trained on a point somewhere behind her.  "There are several viable suspects that we are looking into."

"There's actually only one," comes Watson's voice from the doorway. She's leaning against the wall, her expression completely and utterly unreadable.  Jamie frowns and tries very hard not to look annoyed that she cannot see any truth in it.  "But I think you already know that, don't you?"

She smiles, and it feels less predatory and more shy.  Jamie's not used to feeling the way that Joan Watson makes her feel, confused and insecure are not emotions she handles well.  "I do," she agrees judiciously.

There's a distant beeping and Watson vanishes once more, disappearing down the stairs and into the kitchen.

"What does Shonda Vincent have to do with you being here?" Sherlock asks, taking the papers when Jamie holds them out to her.  He reads quickly, eyes scanning the pages and flipping them over, drinking in Westin's neat handwriting and Jamie's own scrawled notes.  "You never intended to come back here," he adds, still reading.  "Your meeting with Watson was on a whim, but I know you did not want to see me."

Jamie glances up at him, curious.  "Why do you think I wouldn't want to see you?"  He's hit on the truth, but her reasons are certainly not avoidance of interaction with him, or even with Watson.  She'd wanted to handle the PKE Group herself, without their further involvement.  The message of Nigel Peddicort had fallen on deaf ears and Jamie had no choice.  She'd kill them all for defying her.

He bites his lip and rubs at the stubble growing on his neck with an absent thumb, flipping another page over.  "Whatever truce we formed in December has long-since expired," his mouth is a hard line of determination, and Jamie cannot resist the urge to rile him up, just a little bit.

"The truce we formed then is the same as it is now, Sherlock.  Watson is in danger, you are in danger."  She gets to her feet and takes the papers from Sherlock, flipping to the very last page, where she'd written out her own notes based on Westin's observations and the police reports.  "The bodies are a distraction, an attempt to attract your attention, albeit a sloppy one."  She passes the papers back to Sherlock, who reads them intently, one hand still absently scratching at his neck.  "Your killer is a shrewd planner; she knew exactly what she was doing, making sure that those bodies ended up where they did."

Watson has reappeared with coffee. She passes a mug to Jamie without a word and hands Sherlock his, trading Jamie's reports wordlessly with him so that she can read as well.  She drifts then, across the room to settle into the armchair by the cold fireplace.

Jamie sips her coffee, eyebrows rising at how Watson has somehow figured out how she likes it.  A part of her hopes that this will not take long and that she'll be able to leave and finally sleep.  She knows better than to expect that.  Sherlock talks himself in circles on a good day, and she knows enough of their post-reunion relationship to know that this will not be a good day.

"So you think that Shonda Vincent is after, what, us?"  Watson asks, setting the file down on the floor before her with a definitive slapping sound that feels completely and utterly final to Jamie.  She’s got her eyebrow raised and seems to not believe the truth in Jamie’s words.  Jamie hates that she cannot impress the urgency of the situation onto Watson. 

"Camille," Jamie corrects absently, cradling the mug to her chest.  She's using it like a shield against Watson's judgmental gaze, hating that she lacks the understanding to comprehend the enigma that is Joan Watson.  "Shonda is her alias for sport."

"Camille then," Watson says.  She stares hard at Jamie for a long moment, evaluating her; Jamie is sure, looking for a weakness.  "Why come here and tell us this? You've obviously returned to handle the situation, so why involve us?"

Jamie turns, sets her mug on the fireplace mantle.  It's a stalling tactic and they're sure to know it.  The trouble is that she doesn't have words to say that she doesn't want to risk them, doesn't want to risk that beautiful mind of Joan Watson's, not even for the thought of her potential gain.  She cannot stomach the loss of either of them; Sherlock, for what he has been and Watson, for what she might become.

Things aren't easy like that.  There isn't a clear reason that Jamie can articulate without tipping her hand completely. She lets out a slow breath and turns a perfectly neutral face to face both of them.

"Because it is what I want," she says simply.  "You both knowing saves me the trouble of having to protect you."  She taps a finger against her chin and adds, almost like an afterthought.  "The trade that the PKE Group has engaged in here is truly horrible, and those girls deserve better, don't you think?"

**you hold the key (locked up inside yourself)**

Moriarty falls asleep a little after midnight, curled into an armchair with a stack of papers on her lap.  Joan drapes a blanket over her and asks Sherlock if he intends to go to sleep any time soon.  When he shakes his head in the negative, nose buried in the file Moriarty's brought with her, Joan tells him to keep an eye on their guest and heads up to bed.

It's a strange feeling, to have Moriarty in the house.  Joan isn't entirely sure if she likes it or not, but she does think that Moriarty is probably right.

They'd spent the evening laying out the evidence, carefully inspecting it piece by piece until they were all certain that there had to be more to the investigation than what had initially met their eye when they'd found Katia's body down on Brighton Beach.  Sherlock still planned on going to speak to the harbor master in the morning, and so Joan would be alone, presumably with Moriarty while they figured out their next movie.

"What if she runs?"  Joan had asked Sherlock, inclining her head to one side and glancing at the sleeping Moriarty.  She still wasn't entirely sure that Moriarty was actually sleeping, or faking it to see what they'd do.  She had looked exhausted that afternoon, even more so before she'd dozed off.  "Vincent, I mean." Joan had clarified when Sherlock gave Moriarty an appraising look.

"We are confined, Watson, to the rules of investigation," Sherlock had replied, tapping on the keyboard and pulling up a more detailed map of the harbor than the one that Marcus had given them earlier.  "We cannot appear to jump to conclusions without having to explain how we've reached them."  He lowered his voice leaning up to catch her ear, "And besides, the last thing I want is the NYPD pulled in two different directions - worried about _her_ being back in town.  Best let their investigation run its course and hope that we don't alert Camille Vincent to us being onto her until we're ready to interview her."

Joan bushes her teeth and finds herself contemplating when it became acceptable for Moriarty to actually be a presence in their lives.  She is a self-proclaimed murderer, she'd almost driven Sherlock to murder; and on top of everything else she is also a wanted fugitive and Joan wants no part of her.

She gets into bed some ten minutes later and stares up at the ceiling for a long time before finally falling asleep.

Sherlock doesn't wake Joan before he leaves in the morning.  Joan wakes up of her own accord, which is something of a rarity when they're on a case.  The house is silent, and on the breath of the air conditioning rattling through the ancient air vent in the floor, Joan catches the faint smell of fresh coffee.

She foregoes contacts and sits on the edge of her bed, wiping at her smudged glasses before putting them on.  She has no idea how they'd gotten so dirty and doesn't really want to know when she'd gotten a finger print directly in the middle of her left eye.  She’s usually more careful.

It is with sleepy feet that Joan descends the two flights of stairs to the kitchen, woozily tugging on a sweater.  Today the heat has broken, and it feels almost cold in the house with the air conditioning running.

"Oh, you're up."

Joan doesn't jump out of her skin, but it's a close thing.  She tugs her sweater shut over her chest and looks down at her feet.  They're bare and she feels almost stupidly under dressed as a very rested and perfectly put-together looking Moriarty is staring at her over the top of the _Ledger_ , the _Times_ , clearly already read, sitting on the table beside her.

Deciding that is entirely too early to be dealing with sociopaths, Joan makes a b-line across the kitchen to the coffee maker.  She gets herself down a mug and risks a glance over her shoulder to see if Moriarty has one already.  She does.  Joan lets a quiet breath, one that she hadn't been aware she was holding, out.  She isn't sure why, but it makes her feel better, that she doesn't have to be polite or play hostess.

"Sherlock said not to wake you," Moriarty says, turning the page of the paper, her nose wrinkling at the sports pages.  As if Joan needed another reason to find her irritating.  "He left at six thirty with Detective Bell to speak to the harbor master."

It is nearly nine thirty now.  Joan glances at the clock on the wall and winces.  Moriarty has been left to her own devices for close to three hours.  Joan can only imagine what she's gotten up to.

"I cannot imagine that your internal clock let you sleep very long once you finally crashed," Joan replies, settling down to a seat at the far end of the table, her fingers rooting through the sections of the Times until she finds the sports pages.  She wants to check the baseball scores, the Braves were playing the Phillies and that has standings implications for the Mets.

Joan unfolds the section to the scoreboard section and trails her fingers over the National League standings.  The Phillies had won, which sets the Braves back a full game.  Excellent.

"If you're attempting to imply that I am still severely jetlagged, you are correct," Moriarty answers coolly, folding the paper closed and setting it down on the pile. She eyes Joan for a moment, blearily reading the sports boxes and clutching a mug of coffee before picking up her own.  "Not that I ever get much sleep," she adds and there's almost a bitter air about it.

Letting out a derisive sounding snort, Joan folds the paper over to read the baseball roundup and scowls at the Nats score.  They're gaining, on the Braves and the Mets are still in dead last.  It's going to be a long season at this rate.  "No, you just go until you crash, don't you?"  She tilts her head to the side and glances sideways at Moriarty.  "Sherlock does it too."  Doubly so when you're around, Joan thinks, but does not add.

They sit there for a long time, eyeing each other, until Moriarty rises from her chair to deposit her mug in the sink.  "Sherlock got bagels this morning," she says, standing in the kitchen as though she belongs there. Joan hates how natural it is, and how easily she can lull herself into forgetting just how Moriarty is, and what she’s capable of. Death follows her, the smell and stink of it will never fully wash from her clothes.  Even now, Joan thinks, she reeks of all the crimes she’s committed.  "If you want one."

Joan doesn’t think that she could eat with Moriarty around.  Drinking water yesterday had been a challenge, a chore born out of necessity, rather than comfort at the idea.  She’s tried to put on a brave face, and discussing Moriarty’s own observations on the case without any pretext or double speak had been helpful.  She doesn’t want Moriarty to linger, to try and maneuver a way to bring herself back into their lives.  “Why are you really here?” Joan asks.  She folds the newspaper in her hands back into a neat square and sets it back down on top of the _Ledger_ that she hasn’t yet read. Moriarty’s staring at her as though she cannot believe Joan’s audacity, and Joan struggles to keep her expression open and neutral.  She hasn’t had nearly enough sleep to have to deal with Moriarty right now.

It’s only when she’s picked up her coffee and sips it tentatively that she finds the courage to elaborate.  The coffee is good, well made and tasting as though it’s been ground fresh.  They don’t own a coffee grinder, which means that Sherlock probably picked it up with the bagels this morning.  “I mean, it can’t just be that you’re worried that Camille Vincent is going to come here.”

Moriarty tugs the line of her blouse smooth and looks down at the pointy toes of her shoes.  She’s dressed for the heat today, another sleeveless blouse and skirt that creates a nice silhouette, if you’re looking for that sort of thing.  Sometimes Joan wonders why Moriarty ever even bothers, it’s not as though the people she employs are particularly well-dressed, and it doesn’t seem practical to go about murdering people in a pencil skirt and Jimmy Choos.  She supposes that it’s a matter of taste and a put on air of class, rather than anything else. 

It's more uncomfortable than anything else, Joan decides, to sit under that gaze.  It's intense, almost too intense, misplaced emotions that Joan should not be allowing her to continue to entertain. Sherlock has hypothesized as his most morose that everything that Moriarty feels is too intense.  She isn't like a normal person; she doesn't do normal people emotions when she does them at all.

Now though, she just looks puzzled.  "Why do you think that, Joan?" she asks.  Joan tries to keep her expression blank, but she feels herself suck in air despite herself, a retort on her lips.  She knows that it is the conversation that Moriarty wants, more than anything else, and she holds her tongue and glares as best she can.

She has the audacity to wait for Joan to say something, and when Joan sits in stony silence, sipping her coffee and watching the minutes tick by on the clock on the wall, Moriarty finally gives in. "But you are correct in your assessment, my presence here does serve another purpose."

Setting down her coffee cup, Joan fiddles with the newspapers for a moment, straightening them until their seams are perfectly aligned once more.  "And what exactly would that be?" she asks.

Joan is expecting Moriarty to say something about offering herself as protection, which is bullshit and they'd both know it. She isn't the sort of person who'd actually ever admit it out loud, but she's just one person.  And from the discussion last night, it sounds like Camille Vincent is going to take more than one person to take down.

Moriarty stares at her for a long time, her eyes soft and almost kind.  Joan doesn't like it; it feels uneven and dishonest on her face.  She's not a kind person, or even a nice one.  It's all a lie - an act like any other.  Joan thinks she should be used to not trusting a single thing that comes out of her mouth by now.  Goodness knows she's hurt them both enough.

Hurt and helped them.  The dichotomy of every single one of Moriarty’s actions over the past few months have been so hard for Joan to comprehend. She doesn’t know how to wrap her head around them – they don’t feel real.  Nothing about this feels _real_ , not truly.  She’s more confused than ever.

And yet, Joan realizes, shifting uncomfortably under the scrutiny and picking up her coffee once more, there’s more to it.  There’s always more to it.  Her coffee is cold now, and she drinks it anyway, her face not giving away the bitter, uncomfortable taste of it.  It is the fact that Moriarty is here, that she isn't trying to hurt either of them, that has Joan so intrigued.  The why of it dances like a fever dream just outside her field of vision and she longs to lean forward and grasp at its mirage.   
   
She's weighing her words, Joan realizes, and the idea worries her.  "Tell me something," Moriarty begins, raising one hand in the air and twisting her fingers in an almost disinterested gesture.  "How are you sleeping?"

Joan stares at her, because the question is so out of the blue that she has no answer, or at least one she's willing to give Moriarty.  Not that her sleeping habits are any of Moriarty’s business.

"I imagine that it has become something of a chore, given your ordeal in December," Moriarty continues.  She's speaking so casually, like she's commenting on the weather and not Joan's mental state following events that Moriarty had played a role in.  The audacity of it makes Joan's head hurt and she drains the rest of the cold coffee with a scowl on her face.  "It's a shame really.  I'd hoped that Park's incarceration and Peddicort's death would have brought you some peace of mind."

"Trauma doesn't work like that; you've inflicted it on enough people to know that by now." All her life, Joan has been taught to be careful about what she says and to guard how she speaks against those who might take offense.  She doesn't care now.  Moriarty deserves her ire and her sharp tongue.

God knows, she's done enough to Sherlock to understand exactly how hard it for those mental wounds to heal.

Joan is trying.  She has to keep trying.  She sits in her therapist's office once a week now and talks about her sleep and how the book helps and how she doesn't understand why it does.  "It's not even a book about anything in particular," Joan has told her therapist (and her mother) on a few occasions, "but the way it's told - I don't know - the words help in a way I can't put into words." 

It is a book about loss though.  It’s a story about coping and putting your best foot forward.  It’s about not hiding behind what’s happened to you, but rather trying to move past it by accepting it as fact.  Joan’s done that and the process has gotten better. She still has the nightmares and the scars probably will fade in time – but Sonny Park isn’t getting out of jail any time soon and Nigel Peddictort - no matter how tenuous his connection to the case was – is dead. 

Maybe she’s lying to herself about it not really helping, or that she’s not slowly starting to get over it.   She can’t shake the image of how cold Moriarty’s eyes had been, her hand not even shaking as she’d leveled a gun at Sonny Park. She’d been perfectly content to pull the trigger, to snuff out his life before he’d ever had a chance to stand trial.  It is that memory, more than any other, that frightens Joan still.

Moriarty crosses the room in three short steps.  She stands before Joan, looking down at her like Joan is no more than a peon, a tool to be manipulated.  Joan _hates_ it.  Hates how she can see it so clearly and how she’s letting it happen because it’s early and she’s not caffeinated enough to figure out how to manipulate back.  "It is a process, everything is, but you are stronger than this, Watson."  Moriarty glances towards the window, at the day outside, her expression distant.

She finds the words then, and they come out as a challenge, biting and hard. "You have no idea how strong I am.”  Joan says it with gritted teeth and intent that’s every bit as murderous as Moriarty has ever been.  She has no right to make such assumptions about Joan, or to even dare think that she knows Joan better than she knows herself.  If there is one thing that Joan holds near and dear to her heart, it is her sense of self – she trusts herself implicitly – doubt is never a question.  Now though, she glances down at her hands for the briefest of instances. She can’t show weakness, only admit it on her own terms. "Or how weak.  All you have are your guesses and your deductions, same as Sherlock."

There’s a scrape of the chair being pulled away from the table, and Moriarty has deposited herself so that they’re knee to knee, staring at each other across the impossibly small amount of space between them.  Moriarty has her elbows on her knees and Joan wants to draw back, but it’s a sign of weakness. 

Moriarty’s looking at Joan, her head tilted slightly to one side and a pensive expression on her face. "Then tell me, help me to understand what you are feeling, so that I can make you better."

Everything seems to break and Joan’s voice seems to die in her throat.  She doesn't want this, and this hand that’s offered to her – this _lifeline_   - comes with so many strings attached that Joan can’t even begin to puzzle them all out.  She cannot have this, it isn't… it isn't a good thing to consider, even if she knows she can’t want it.

She swallows once, twice, her jaw working against her better judgment.  "Get out."

There’s a ringing in her ears as Moriarty looks at her, her expression unreadable.  Something tugs at the corners of her mouth, that perfect mask falling out of place to reveal something else entirely beneath it.  It’s a vulnerable look, genuine confusion, and Joan wants nothing to do with it.   "Watson, I..."

Joan has nothing more to say.  She doesn’t want to say anything else.  She hates the attitude, the very _idea_ that the one who has helped to put her into this mental place is also the key to her recovery.  She hates that Moriarty knows it and actually seems genuinely invested in helping her.  Joan doesn’t want it, she can’t.  It isn’t good and it isn’t right. 

All she can hope for is that this will stop, that the confusion will lessen into something she can actually stomach without feeling like she’s going to vomit with all the bile that gathers at the back of her throat. She cannot be intrigued, she cannot be drawn into the web of lies and of pretty words that Moriarty weaves so deftly. She has to stop it before it can go any further. 

Her expression hardens and she pushes herself to her feet.  Her knees bump Moriarty’s as she stands and she points towards the stairs that lead up to the front door.  "Just.  Just go.”  Joan’s voice isn’t shaking, but it isn’t firm either.  It’s the same small voice that she’s found creeps out of her when the memories are the strongest – cold steel against her skin, emotionless eyes that would kill for her without a second thought.  A wave of guilt hits Joan, and she clenches her hand into a fist and forces herself to not look at Moriarty.  “Thank you for telling us about Camille Vincent, we will be careful.  But please, just go.  I'll make your excuses to Sherlock."

Moriarty gets up, and her fingers brush against Joan’s briefly as she fishes out the crossword from the _Times_ and folds the page into fourths.  She crosses the kitchen with her head held high and Joan is about to breathe a sigh of relief when Moriarty turns, one hand on the banister.

“The book is helping, isn’t it?” It isn’t a question.  It’s a pronouncement of everything that cannot be said between them for fear of what it might all mean.  She looks up the stairs, and Joan follows her faze.  “I’m glad.” She says, and disappears up them. 

Joan waits until she hears the front door close before she lets out the breath she’d been holding, her heart pounding in her chest. 

-

There are two texts from Westin and another from Sheng when she finally deposits herself in the backseat of the car that Collins is driving and tells him to take her back to the hotel.  Jamie reads them in quick succession, her mind supplying the answers to her own cypher despite the fact that she's far too distracted to fully comprehend what it is that she's reading.  Her concentration is shot, preoccupied with what was said in Sherlock's kitchen.

She'd hoped, and perhaps she'd been a fool to trust such a hope, that Watson would understand what she was doing.  She wants to make Watson better, and Jamie cannot fathom why Watson would not want her help in that.  Trauma was a slow process to recover from, Jamie did know it better than most people, but it was the way that Watson had summarily dismissed her offer of assistance that Jamie could not understand.

What was it about her help in particular that was so unpleasant for Watson to accept?  She'd accepted the book, and it was clearly helping.  Jamie tucks her phone back into her purse and stares out the window.  She has no answers to this, despite all the lofty claims she'll make of understanding the situation perfectly.

Jamie is unaccustomed to feeling like she's in the dark.  She wants to pick apart the problem until she's sure she has it solved, but she knows that that's a bad idea - that there are other things she should be devoting her attention to at the present moment.

Leaning over, Jamie rolls down the partition and Collins' eyes flash to her's before signals and merges into expressway traffic.  "Has there been any movement?" she asks.

In the bright summer sunlight, Collins' skin seems to glow with a radiance beneath his three piece suit that captures Jamie's imagination.  It's beautiful, really, the sadness that he's carried around with him the past six months.  She wants to find a way to express that sadness - the same sadness that seems to emanate from Joan Watson - on canvas.  So far, one thousand strokes a day, she has no idea how to recreate it.

"Not as much as we might like," Collins explains.  "Westin sent the details to your phone, but I think he's trying to make up for mucking up the Vincent thing - so there might not be as much as he lets on."

"I admire your candor, Collins," Jamie says.  They are friends, Westin and Collins; it cannot be easy to throw a friend under the bus like that.  "But it truly is a simple question.  Are the PKE Group here, and if so, has Westin managed to figure out where they are?"

Collins turns then, pulling his sunglasses down to look at her while they wait in a snarl of traffic.  "You aren't seriously considering walking into that pit of villains are you?  Vincent's not just after Holmes and Watson - you're on her list too."

"I don't pay you to question my judgment, Mr. Collins," Jamie snaps.

"No mum," he replies, turning his attention back to the road.  "Just to look after your security."

She sits back and doesn't say anything more, because she does appreciate a loyal body guard who isn't about to allow her to run off half-cocked into a situation.  The problem is that this is the best, most logical course of action.  She knows it and Collins probably does as well - Westin will agree with her.  There is a need to speak to the PKE Group leadership, to express to them how absolutely idiotic their crusade into the city truly is.

Jamie stares out the window, looking out over the East River as the car moves slowly through traffic towards the hotel.  She has a lot to think about - everything she did not mention to Watson or Sherlock last night.

The PKE Group had been an ally.  She'd liked Nigel Peddicort, but he'd ignored her warning, and Jamie could not stand for his continued defiance.  She ran her empire with a ruthlessness that the PKE Group lacked.

At the hotel she had dossiers on each remaining member of their board, information gathered through years of careful observation.  Jamie found that she felt loathe to give up that information so willingly, to use it all in one single attack.  It was not her style.

Nothing of the past few months has truly been her style.  She prefers the passive role, to allow her agents to do the killings while she is safely sequestered half-way around the world.

It is not the first time that she's lamented that she decided to meet Sherlock Holmes before arranging for his demise.

Westin is waiting for them when they get back to the hotel.  His expression a meek beneath his stupid wispy mustache and Jamie hardly spares him a glance before collecting the dossiers on each of the remaining members of the PKE Group from him.

"We need to move quickly," she tells him, her expression grim.

He nods once, his shaggy, stylish haircut falling into his eyes.  "I think I've got a good idea where they're meeting."  He leads her over to a map that he's pinned up onto the wall.  There are circles and marks - surveillance - Sheng's project, as well as a careful triangle of activity that is dangerously close to Sherlock's home across the river.

"That whole area is warehouses," Westin says, tapping his pen on the map.  "Less security and police presence, but a lot more exposed.  Vincent likes the water and this entire area is completely exposed.  I wouldn't put it past her to open fire into such an area with an M-16 or a similar caliber of weapon."

They had to assume that Vincent would have the best weapons available to her in a place like the United States.  Her previous work in Europe had been hindered, somewhat, by the local weapons laws.  It made her favorite toys harder to get, and while Jamie was never about to deny an assassin their tools, some of her requests the times that they had worked together had been rather... outrageous.

"I want your assurances that Sheng is keeping a close watch on Holmes and Watson," Jamie says pointedly to Westin.  She sets the dossiers down on the low table before Westin's map.  "Vincent will not hesitate to fulfill that part of her contact at any time and he is too stubborn to refuse an outright offer of protection from the likes of me."

She'd offered it to him, after he'd shaken her awake at five thirty that morning. He'd made her coffee fresh from the bakery up the block, and had listened to her offer with careful ears before dismissing her out of hand.

"You know that I could never accept such help."  He'd sounded almost sorry too, and Jamie hadn't understood why he'd refused her until Watson had reacted to her offer of help much in the same way.

They protected each other, and Jamie hated it because it meant that she could not protect either of them.  She'd told Sheng, after Sherlock had left with Detective Bell, to follow them and keep her appraised of the situation.  There hadn't been much to report, and the only reason she'd left Sherlock's home when she had been told to was because Sheng had said that Sherlock was on his way back.  She was not going to risk another situation like what had happened in December.

"He is still in place," Westin says, pulling out his phone and handing it over to her.  There's a message with their latest movements - back to the police station - and Sheng's assurances that he wasn't about to walk into a pit of wolves. "I can tell him to leave if you'd like."

"No," Jamie says.  She sets the phone down on the table, on top of the dossiers.  "We have to play this very carefully," she stares up at the map.  She needs to think, to determine how best to handle this situation.  Her instincts say to kill them all and let them stand as a lesson against defying her wishes for the entire city, but Jamie knows better than to do that.  Peddicort had been an outlier, a casualty born of his own foolish decisions.

"Leave me."

There a plan to be made here, but Jamie isn't sure what it is just yet.  She needs more time, time she knows she doesn’t have, before she acts.

If there's one thing that Jamie hates, it's being rushed.

-

Joan doesn’t tell Sherlock what she and Moriarty talked about when he comes to collect her with Marcus and seems surprised that Moriarty isn't lurking in the shadows somewhere.

"She left," Joan says, slinging her purse over her shoulder and debating sandals for a moment before she pulls on her boots.  She doesn't feel like having to spent a good half-hour later trying to scrub the city grime off of the bottoms of her feet. "I don't know if she was called away, or if she just decided to go."

He knows she's lying by the way he looks at her, hands clasped behind his back.  Despite the fact that he's been on the waterfront all morning, he looks hot and uncomfortable in his shirt and vest.  he's rolled his sleeves up, and there's a hint of a sunburn on his cheeks and forearms.

"Here," she says, tugging a tube of sunscreen from her purse and pressing it into his hands.  "You're already starting to burn."

"I'm going to be spending much of the rest of the day indoors, Watson," he replies, but takes the tube anyway.  "I hardly see the point."

"Humor me," Joan says, because the last time he'd gotten a sunburn he'd been miserable and had then become fascinated by his peeling skin.  Joan is pretty sure that she could go the rest of her life never being that grossed out ever again.

He follows her out the door and pauses, digging another square of white paper from his pocket.  "Do you think she'll come back?"

Joan looks down the stairs towards Marcus' cruiser.  She puts on her sunglasses and shrugs as Sherlock bends and tucks the paper under the door.  "I don't know," she says honestly.  She doesn't think that Moriarty would come back, not after what Joan had said to her.  There wasn’t anything else that needed to be said - no more superiority to lord over Joan.  They'd had a conversation in relatively plain English, and it had ended as Joan had expected: badly.

The trip to the precinct is largely spent discussing what they've learned from the Harbor Master.  There are cameras at many of the major marinas in the area, but Shonda Vincent's a name he knows well.

"The guy was seriously obsessed with sailboats," Marcus says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as they wait at a red light.  "It was honestly a little creepy."

Sherlock's shoulders bounce up and down once and he turns to look at Joan in the back seat.  "He knows that she was out because her jibbing style, apparently, is rather unique.  She takes a lot of risk for a solitary sailor, and he was worried, given the wind that night, that she might actually capsize."

"Did she?" Joan asks.

It's Marcus who answers, his expression pensive.  "Nah, the Harbor Master said that she counterbalanced the wind a lot better than a single woman in a small craft usually did.  He didn't get a good look at it, because it was getting dark, but he said it looked like there might have been a second person present on the boat, maybe helping."

"Katia," Joan guesses.

Sherlock nods grimly.  "It implies that Katia knew Vincent and was willing to go out in a boat with her at night."  He shakes his head and turns his attention back to the window.  "It suggests the level of premeditation that we'd predicted.  I'd like to interview her, but Bell wants to run the whole case by Captain Gregson before we bring her in."

There's a weight to his words, an implication that Joan knows all too well.  He wants to wait and see what happens - what Moriarty might do in the time that delaying has given her.  Joan's eyes narrow, because she doesn’t like the idea of giving Moriarty any leeway at all.  Sherlock should know better, they both should.  Moriarty isn't a force to be trifled with and Joan has half a mind to text Sherlock a picture of Nigel Peddicort's mutilated body.  The rest of the PKE Group, if they're in town, are going to end up just like that if they're not careful.

Sherlock must see it, the writing on the wall is clear as day, and he cannot be giving her such leeway just because of the nature of this threat and whatever truce they made back in December.

Joan closes her eyes and tries to fight back the wave of anxiety, the feeling she can never just shake off the way that so many people in her life have told her to just move on from.  She's a coward, maybe, because she's as afraid of Moriarty as she is of Park or even Nigel Peddicort.

It's because she wants to help, to make Joan better and Joan cannot accept it.  There hasn't been anything cruel about Moriarty's actions, and they've only been in Joan's best interests, and it's all wrong.  Moriarty is supposed to be entirely self-servicing, motivated by greed and by her own interest.

Everyone wants to rule the world, Joan thinks ruefully, but Moriarty might actually come close.  They're caught up in a turf war they don't understand.

It strikes Joan as funny, that she's never felt like a pawn before this moment.

"Do you think you could arrest her, given what we know now?"  Joan asks Marcus, and he lets out a quiet sigh. He obviously doesn't think so.

"I want to see what the captain says.  I don't think that we've got nearly enough to even bring her in for questioning."  He shakes his head.  "Probably better to see what Gregson thinks before we go any further."

The station is a bustle with mid-afternoon foot traffic and Joan stands off to one side and listens to Marcus and Sherlock get in a truly spectacular argument over how best to proceed.  Joan is inclined to agree with Sherlock that they need to at least speak to Vincent.  She wishes that they had names of other members of the PKE Group, to maybe paint them as the suspects.

She supposes that she could ask Moriarty, that she'd probably be happy to provide them, but Joan swallows the urge.  She doesn't even have a phone number for Moriarty anyway.

"We need more information, or something concrete," Captain Gregson says.  "Conjecture is great in a vacuum, but it doesn't make for arrests that stand up in court."

"But she was at the scene of the crime around the time of the murder, with a second person on her boat," Sherlock pleads with him, and Joan looks away.  She hates this part, the part where Sherlock doesn't get his way and he goes off and does whatever he wants on his own.

Captain Gregson hates it too.

They leave the captain's office some ten minutes later after Joan assures him that the last thing she'd let Sherlock do is run off half-cocked and mess this up before they even have a chance to get the investigation into Camille Vincent off the ground.

They're on the train before Sherlock speaks, and when he does it is in a very low voice.  "Watson," he says, leaning against the pole he's holding onto so that he's essentially speaking in his hear.  "Do you see the man just over my right shoulder?"

"Asian in a suit with the boy band haircut?" she clarifies.

"Yes," Sherlock says, and he brushes some invisible dust from her shoulder.  "He's one of Moriarty's, he drove the car when we went to get you from Mr. Park."  Sherlock's eyes blink in quick succession and Joan's trying to figure out what the hell that means when he straightens up.  "We'd best see what he wants," he says, and turns on one toe just as the train goes around a bend and the lights flicker.

Joan lets out a low groan as she watches Sherlock march up to the pan and place a hand on his shoulder.  He's so amicable about it that it seems almost casual, until the guy's alarmed expression turns into panic and he reaches towards the inside of his jacket.

"I told her," Sherlock is saying, his hand now around the man's wrist.  "That we did not want her protection."

This is news to Joan, and she's honestly not surprised that the request was ignored.  it isn't as though Moriarty's ever particularly cared for what they want anyway.  She does exactly what she pleases no matter the consequences.

The man's eyes narrow.  "That isn't want I was told," he says and holds up his hands.  The train is packed at this hour and they have to maneuver though one and then two stops before the three of them are standing around the same pole.

"Your name is Sheng, right?"  Joan asks, recalling a conversation with Sherlock from months ago, when he'd told her the finer details of what had happened during that rescue.  "I'm Joan."

"I know," He says, but takes her hand when she offers it. His grip is firm, and Joan can see tattoos gunning up his arms under his shirtsleeves.  A former mobster, interesting. "You're the one I'm supposed to keep an eye on."

it is hard to resist the urge to roll her eyes at that, but Joan bows her head, resignedly.  "You can tell her that I'm fine," she says.  "I don't need a body guard."

"Ma'am," he says, and his accent is thick enough that the words don't quite fit.  "I do not think you realize just what you're up against.  Vincent is one of the best - if not the best now that Moran is out of the picture.  M. doesn’t like her because she's too unpredictable, and I'll stay, thank you, because I don't want to deal with the fall out if I don't."

"Do you have a way to reach her?"  Sherlock asks, bouncing on his toes to avoid lurching into the pole as the train speeds on.

Sheng holds out a cellphone, blank and with no case or personalization - a burner.  When Sherlock takes it from him, he pauses, brow furrowed with confusion.  "Do you know the code?"

"Yes," Sherlock says distractedly, typing away.  "We cracked it about a year ago now." Sheng’s eyebrows shoot up, and Joan can see him cast a panicked glance around before turning his attention back to the phone in Sherlock’s hand.  The train is lurching and his jacket has fallen open as he holds onto the pole.  Joan can see the gun tucked into his waistband, and she feels her stomach turn uncomfortably at the sight of it. 

They live in a place where such things are illegal, but Joan grew up in a poor neighborhood, and she’s lived in Brooklyn a lot longer than most of the people who say they live here these days.  She’s not unused to seeing guns; it’s just being in such a proximity to one that’s not attached to Marcus or any of their other friends that the department is strange.  This, along with the fact that Sheng is attached to Moriarty and will follow _her_ orders unsettles Joan, and she doesn’t like it or want it.  Judging by the look on Sherlock’s face as he types out his ridiculously long text, he doesn’t either.

Joan doesn’t know what he's typing, but when they get off at their stop the phone rings, and Sheng answers it with a concerned look on his face.  A second later, he holds the phone out to Joan.  "She wants you," he says.

They're climbing out of the station, the late afternoon heat hitting them full in the face, and Joan's sucking in a deep breath of air as Moriarty's voice, cool and collected as ever, comes over the line.  "You mustn't be cross with Sheng; he's just doing his job, Watson."

Scowling, Joan wants to ask her if the conversation this morning meant nothing to her, or if she’s just being intentionally obtuse to piss Joan off.  She never asked for this, and Sherlock had turned it down.  Moriarty needs to respect their wishes.  "I don't need your protection, the brownstone is safe."

Moriarty laughs, and it’s that warm and genuine one that Joan’s only heard once or twice.  It isn’t terrifying like her usual emotionless chuckle and Joan comes to a halt, standing just beside the station steps and tries to wrap her head around just what is being told to her and asked of her.  Sherlock is speaking to Sheng in a low voice and Sheng’s face also looks concerned, but less so than before.  Joan is willing to bet that he’s attempting to get more information on the PKE Group out of him.  "Watson,” Moriarty says with the lofty tone of one speaking to a very young child.  Joan grits her teeth and lets her, because she’s not about to start an argument about how Moriarty’s superiority complex is one of her worst personality traits.   “Anyone with a modicum of skill can break into the brownstone.  I've done it on more than one occasion and I don't think I even needed lock picks - the roof door is usually unlocked."

 _Sherlock…_ Joan thinks darkly.  "I understand that, but I don't think--" Joan feels as though she’s grasping at straws, and when Moriarty cuts her off, Joan feels her scowl deepen. 

"That is exactly the problem, you are not thinking rationally.  Camille Vincent has a contract on your head - the girls were a means to an end, nothing more.  The PKE Group means to eliminate you and Sherlock both.  Mr. Sheng can leave if that is what you truly wish, but I would advise against it."  Her voice had changed.  It sounds more concerned than ever before – annoyed that Joan is not taking her warning seriously and worried all at the same time.  It’s strange, Joan doesn’t like how personable it is, how friendly.  Moriarty, as far as Joan is aware, doesn't do friendly.

Joan starts to walk again, heading up the block a step and a half or so behind Sheng and Sherlock.  They're still speaking in low voices and Joan isn't bothering to try and follow their conversation.  It's hot and she can't concentrate and her nerves are already shot.  She's had way too much exposure to this woman in the past two days for her own comfort, and Joan hates that there is so clearly a solution that exists just under her nose - she just isn't seeing it and Moriarty certainly isn't going to make it easy for her.

It is maybe with irritation, but probably more with frustration that Joan finally says what's been on her mind since this whole ordeal started.  She wants to goad Moriarty into an actual, genuine reaction, rather than smoke screens and lies.  "Why you can be honest with me is beyond all reason."

Moriarty gives a short bark of humorless laughter.  "You don't want my honestly, Joan, you never have."  There's a beat of silence, before she adds.  "You want me to play the villain to your heroine and I cannot oblige this time."

She won't oblige because she's legitimately concerned, invested even.  Joan files the information away for future reference and to discuss with Sherlock later.  They both know that Moriarty is far more involved with this than they'd initially thought.  She'd inserted herself into their conflict with the PKE Group with her actions in December and now the conflict has grown to something of a size that Joan can barely wrap her head around it.  "I'm not him, I see you," she says.  "You pretend around him, but your masks slip don't they?"

Joan can hear Moriarty breathing on the other end, steady and even.  She imagines her sitting in a hotel room somewhere in the city, her expression perfectly blank.  It's a terrifying mental image, and one that Joan cannot shake as she presses where she doubting – wondering if maybe she should just let the sleeping dogs lie.  "You're sticking your nose into this because you know I can see through you."  This time she does hear Moriarty suck in a breath that seems more rapid than the others and Joan knows that she has her beat. "I'm a threat to you."

"Oh Joan," Moriarty says and she sounds almost disappointed.  Joan frowns, had she assessed the situation incorrectly? "You really don't see what is right in front of your nose, do you?" There's a pause, where Joan's frown grows deeper, and Moriarty's tone changes from pleasant to completely businesslike. "Give me back to Sheng."

Joan pulls the phone, screen sweaty and sticky from her ear and passes it back to Sheng.  He takes it and holds it up to his ear as Sherlock glances at Joan.

"What did she want?" he hisses as Sheng says that Joan doesn't catch over the sound over a taxi honking at a driver, asleep at a green light.

She sighs, running a hand through her hair.  "To tell me that she knows how to take care of me better than I do."  She shakes her head.  "I get it, I really do.  This morning she told me she wanted to fix me."

He stands with his hands behind his back, eyeing Joan.  "Do you feel like you need fixing?"

Joan shrugs.  "No more than anyone else."

"Tell her that, next time," Sherlock suggests.  "I imagine she feels guilty - or at least as guilty as someone who is completely evil and has no conscious could be - about what happened in December.  She sent you that book, didn't she?"

"I don't want her help," Joan says.  "I don't want him protecting us, just because she's convinced that Camille Vincent is going to try and kill us."

Sherlock's got his mouth open like he's about to say something, but he's stopped by the sound of his phone ringing.  Joan glances over at Sheng, who's hung up and has his hands in his pockets and doesn’t look to be going anywhere.  Joan rolls her eyes.  Great.

"Thank you," He says, a moment later.  "We have to go back to the station - one of the techs found video evidence that Katia was on that boat the night she died.  We may have enough to actually bring in Vincent."

-

Phillipe Montclair, 49, impossibly French and not aging gracefully, is the defacto head of the PKE Group now that Nigel Peddicort is dead.  Jamie stares down at his dossier for much of the afternoon before she makes her move.  He is the only one of the group that has family in the city, and Jamie's going to make sure that he – and by extension his organization - listens to her this time.

It's a shame, really, that he let his daughter attend school here.  Jamie doesn't understand people who have children and are in this line of work – they leave themselves with an utterly open and absolutely exploitable weakness.  It's better not to have anyone at all, as Jamie likes to tell herself, it leaves you less open to attack.

(And the darkest secrets that Jamie protects with a fierceness that is unparalleled to anything in this world go unmentioned, as they always do.)

Collins collects the girl from her way home from class and Jamie sits her down in the hotel room, so close their knees are knocking together.  She's wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with the school's logo on it, and her eyes look terrified.

"My name is Moriarty," Jamie says, leaning forward and pulling the tape that's covering the girl's mouth from her lips in one steady, if surely painful, tug.

The girl licks her lips, bloody though they are from where the duct tape has taken away dry skin, and swallows nervously.  "I know who you are," she says in shaky French.

"Good, this will be easier if I don't have to explain things to you," Jamie replies.  She picks up the girl's phone from where Collins has left it on the table beside them. It's in a Hello Kitty case and her lock screen is a picture of a frowning cat.  Jamie's expression darkens, for she does not understand children these days.  She guesses the password on the second try – because people are entirely predictable – and scrolls through her contacts until she finds Montclair's number.  "I am going to call your father and you are going to tell him exactly what I say, is that clear?"  She tilts her head to one side, finger hovering over the send call button.  "I'd hate to have to hurt you, Marie."

Ruddy brown eyes look up at Jamie and Jamie knows that this is not the best option, but it is the only one she can think of at present.  Montclair can get Vincent to back off, and Vincent needs to be stopped.

The girl nods, head bobbing up and down just once, and Jamie smiles cruelly, a twist of lips that holds no emotion at all.  She's moving to place the call when Collins steps in, bending low to whisper in her ear that Sheng has called back and that Holmes and Watson have gone back to the police station - and that Camille Vincent has been arrested.  They’ve found concrete evidence, it seems. 

She dials the number then, shooing Collins away with a warning look.

"'allo Marie," She'd forgotten how irritating Montclair's nasally voice was.

"Children are such an exploitable weakness, aren't they Phillip?" she says and feels a rush of pride at the pronouncement.  They've come to her city, they've threatened her people, and it's Jamie's turn to threaten back.

"You," he says in sharply accented English.

Jamie almost relishes the chance to drawl, "Me," into the phone, because it truly has been too long.  The PKE Group are not her usual enemies, but they've never been allies either.  She's allowed their presence because they are fairly non-threatening most of the time.  She despises some of their more unsavory industries, but she saw no reason to not allow their counterfeits out of Hong Kong to continue to circulate. Or at least, she hadn't until they'd decided to stick their noses far into where they did not belong.

He switches back to French, speaking angrily and rapidly. Jamie has done this enough times that she can hold the phone away from her ear until he's tired himself out. His daughter stares at her with wide eyes and Jamie doesn't quite manage to keep her expression blank.  It's a bemused sort of a smile, he's ranting about how he's going to take her out and make her pay for hurting his daughter. Like he'll ever get within a hundred yards of her, it’s cute that he thinks he has a chance. "Oh but you've already got your best dog on it, haven't you Phillip?" She lets out a quiet sigh, just enough to sound irritated.  "Pity she's off on some convoluted errand involving dead Russian hookers and boats."

"But it brought you out of the woodwork, from wherever you've been hiding, didn't it?" Montclair replies and he sounds almost vindicated.  "Threaten Holmes or Watson and you come running like the scorned lover that you are."

Jamie's frown deepens.  "I don't think you want to be insulting me, Phillip, not with you daughter sitting right in front of me."  He grows silent, and Jamie adds, just because she cannot resist the way that this girl is squirming before her.  She has no intention of hurting her, unless her hand is forced.  She doesn't much care for harming the innocents if she can get away with it.  "Shall I hurt her just to prove I'm serious?"

" _Non,_ " He says forcefully.  "Let me speak to her."

"Very well," Jamie replies.  She holds the phone up to Marie's ear.  "Say hello to your father, Marie."

She does, sobbing getting a mess all over the phone.  "Papa," she wails, and Jamie's head pounds at the pitch of it.  The headache that's been building since she spoke to Watson has reached its crescendo, a dull ache above her right eye.  "They took me, right off the street."  Her expression softens, looks less frightened.  "Yes, I know.  I'm in a safe place."

Jamie pulls the phone away from her.  "Safe is a relative term," she says icily.  "Montclair, you are to call off your dog and get out of the city.  Vincent will take the fall for the murders of the girls, the police have her on tape with the last one, and you and your people will vacate these boarders."

"And if I don't comply?" he asks.

"Well, you wouldn't want Marie to end up strung up in St. Patrick’s like poor Nigel would you?”


	4. time (is all we're made of)

They sit next to each other, down at the station, eyeing Moriarty’s man and very pointedly not talking to each other.  It doesn’t seem wise to discuss any further details of the cause until they knew more about what they were dealing with.  Marcus and a few uniformed cops had gone to collect Camille Vincent from her address and had radioed in a few minutes ago saying that they had her in custody.  It is a breath of relief for Joan, who’d secretly been worried that she’d give Marcus the slip, or want to go down fighting.  She doesn’t like imaging the idea of Marcus hurt, it’s… unsettling.  Marcus is almost as much of a constant in her life as Sherlock is these days.  To be without him would be like being without Sherlock, and Joan doesn’t like to think about _that_ too much either.

Moriarty’s man, Sheng, leans against the wall.  He’s attempting to affect a disinterested look; inspecting his fingernails and occasionally checking his phone.  This time, when he pulls out his nondescript burner phone, his eyebrows draw together in confusion as he reads whatever text he’s just received.  He looks up, then, his eyes nervous and fixed on Joan.

“What?” she demands.

His expression stiffens and he’s got his mouth open to reply, but Joan’s attention is drawn to the other side of the room.  The doors have banged open and Marcus is leading a tall, black woman with closely cropped hair and a murderous expression on her face across the bullpen and towards Interview Room One.  Joan imagines that the scowl that is etched on Camille Vincent’s face is because she cannot believe that she’d gotten caught.  She’s wearing jeans and a cream-colored v-neck that stands out like a white flag of surrender against the darkness of her skin – and she takes one look at Joan and Sherlock and lets out a quiet curse in harsh-sounding French.

Marcus comes up to them after he's handed off Vincent to a uniformed officer who takes her into the interview room.  He has a harassed look on his face.  "She," he says, sitting down heavily on the bench next to Joan, hands plunged into his pockets.  His expression mutates to almost relief when he’s out of Vincent’s eyesight. "Is a piece of work."

Joan tilts her head to meet his gaze.  She’s trying her hardest to pretend that Moriarty's man isn't right there, that he isn't listening in, and that this whole conversation will not be relayed, probably verbatim, back to Moriarty once it’s finished.  She doesn't like feeling so exposed, so scrutinized; it makes her feel oddly weak.  She forces her attention back onto Marcus, though, because she doesn't think that Mr. Sheng is going anywhere.  He's too afraid of Moriarty to leave if they told him to.  Besides, they’d already tried that and she’d ended up feeling more conflicted than ever about the whole situation.

"How do you mean?" she asks, brushing at a bit of lint on her skirt.

Puffing out his cheeks, Marcus lets out a slow breath of air and tilts his head back to look at the ceiling.  "Well," he begins, drawing out the word.  "For one, she seems absolutely convinced that she's going to get out of this.  She's already called a lawyer."

Sherlock clucks quietly under his breath.  "So we can't even discuss the potential of there being other girls with her."  He's bemoaning the point, but Joan's glad that Vincent has lawyered up, because she's guilty as sin and they all know it.  It's better to not be given the chance to discuss the case with her than to start a conversation only to be unable to finish it.  Sherlock looks over at Joan, before he leans forward, elbows on his knees and palms pressed together between them.  "Who is her lawyer?"

"Elbam Becker, do you know her?"  Marcus answers, raising a hand to scratch at the back of his head.

Joan has never heard the name before, but she catches sight of Sheng's fingers reaching for his phone once again.  Sherlock's noticed too, by the way he's glaring.  Joan gives him a silencing look and gets to her feet, crossing the short distance to the other side of the hallway to stand beside Sheng and read over his shoulder as he types his message into Moriarty's cipher.  "I take it you know of Becker then?"

He makes an affirmative noise.  "PKE Group's best lawyer, she's good too," Sheng answers in a clipped tone that sounds almost anxious.  Joan purses her lips, glancing at her watch and reading out the response as it comes back from Moriarty. 

_STAY WITH THEM_

Joan can see Marcus as he leans over to inquire who Sheng is, and she can see the exact moment when Sherlock's resolve to keep the two halves of this investigation separate crumples.  He’s started to fidget, to look away from Marcus, and then up to Sheng.  His leg is bouncing up and down and up and down and he soon gets to his feet to cover up the need for repetitive motion that she knows is a lingering effect of heroin addiction. 

"We should discuss this in private," Sherlock announces, and he’s not quite bouncing, but it’s a close thing.  Joan knows if he had a ball, or even a rubber band, that he’d be bouncing or fiddling with it to the point of utter irritation for everyone else present.  He’s struggling with this, which she thinks is interesting.  She makes a mental note to ask him, to remind him gently, that there are places he can go if he feels like he’s slipping.  She doesn’t think he is, but it’s worth it to remind him.  It always is.  "If you don't mind?"  He adds, looking pointedly at Sheng.

Sheng, at least for his part, seems to get the point.  He pushes off the wall and doesn’t look back as he disappears off down the hall towards the interview room.  Joan watches him peer through the window on the door, a pensive expression on his face.

"Who the hell is that guy?" Marcus demands, arms folded across his chest.

"An unfortunate hanger-on that I can't seem to shake," Sherlock says, trying to be evasive.  He should know better, Joan thinks, Marcus is far too sharp to let such bullshit fly.

Exasperation obvious on his face, Marcus turns to Joan. Joan knows that they shouldn’t mention Moriarty to Marcus, that it'll only make this whole thing worse, but they really have no choice.  She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, and tries to find the words to describe who, exactly, Sheng is.  "He's a bodyguard, on loan from Moriarty."

"Moriarty as in your crazy ex Moriarty?" Sherlock winces at the statement, and Marcus is picking up steam.  He looks between them as though he cannot begin to fathom what they’re thinking.  "Moriarty as in, escaped-from-Newgate, criminal-on-the-run, Moriarty?"

Before Sherlock can say anything flippant, Joan nods just once. She understands his ire and his frustration at them not keeping him in the loop, and it’s justly deserved.  It just doesn’t need to be discussed here where others, others who are not attached to Moriarty, might hear. "It’s not an ideal situation, but she's involved with this as well, and her assistance is a necessary evil."

Marcus' lips are drawn into a thin line, and his eyes speak to the slight she knows they've committed against him.  This has happened before, Joan knows.  She's heard from Sherlock about how he'd intentionally pulled the wool over Marcus' eyes during the Sonny Park fiasco. "I told you that it couldn't happen again," he says to Sherlock, not looking at Joan.  "The last time there were... _circumstances_ and I understood that you had to do what you had to do."  He unfolds his arms from his chest, bringing them back to rest against the back of his head, his voice dropping, obviously not wanting to be overheard.  "You could have at least told me what was going on."

"She showed up late last night," Sherlock answers shortly.  "I didn't see how her presence in our private home was the business of the N-Y-P-D."  And it’s the way that he spells out the acronym, leaving a beat, a pause, between each letter that makes Joan think that maybe Sherlock sees this as another incident like the Sonny Park incident.  An incident where the NYPD had been powerless to move fast enough to save Joan before Sonny Park surely killed her.

Joan closes her eyes against the onslaught of memories of that horrible day and night, and tries not to think about hold coldly Moriarty had pulled the trigger and had summarily destroyed Park’s ability to every walk normally again.  She would have killed him, Joan knows this, she would have shot him until he was nothing but particles of skin and blood and bone. 

"As she's a wanted fugitive..." Marcus growls, before shooting Joan a betrayed look. The guilt of it all eats away at Joan, because she knows that they haven't gone about this well at all. "Next time, _tell me._ I get that she's helping and that she'll bolt at the smallest sign of the cops, but damn, y’all, keep me in the loop."

Sherlock's about to say something, but his jaw snaps shut and he inclines, with his head, to the center of the bullpen, where a woman in a dark business suit and murder in her eyes is striding purposefully towards Interview One.  "I do believe that Ms. Becker has arrived."

**time (is all we're made of)**

Camille Vincent wants to talk, and somehow, Joan is not surprised in the slightest.  They have her dead to rights, after all.  She sits across the interview table between Sherlock and Marcus and looks the woman who's been hired to kill her directly in the eye.  She's a stately-looking woman, all regal features and certainly not at all the sort of person that Joan would picture as a contract killer.  She supposes that her perceptions of such things are somewhat skewed, however, given the people that they both know.

Sherlock and Marcus are choosing to ignore their earlier dispute in order to conduct this interview in relative harmony.  Joan doesn’t think that the thread of tension between is noticeable to anyone but her, as she spends most of her life with these two men. She can see the tightness in Sherlock’s jaw and how he’s being overly-loquacious to cover up the fact that he’s annoyed.  She can see the hard line of Marcus’ shoulders and how stiffly he moves.  They’re mad at each other, and this isn’t over.

"Oui," Vincent is saying, leaning forward on shackled hands.  "I know of zis group zat you are talking about.  Zey 'ired me - you see, to kill," she raises a finger and points to Sherlock, "You," she turns the finger onto Joan, "And more importantly, you."

Joan bites the inside of her cheek hard, the pain keeping her face carefully neutral and her eyes steady.  It's somewhat worrisome that she's become the more important of the two of them - especially when the whole thing is so obviously a play at Moriarty.  Her mind drifts back to the conversation she'd had with Moriarty what felt like days ago, but what she knew to be merely a few hours before.

" _You really don't see what's right in front of your nose_ ," Moriarty had said, and she'd sounded almost disappointed in the way that Joan had reacted to her offer of help, and her blatant refusal to play the villain in this game.

Now, though, looking at the true villain in the face, Joan cannot help but feel as though she's made some sort of a miscalculation.  "Why am I more important than Sherlock?" she asks, not sure if she'll get an answer.  Elbam Becker is a rather tenacious lawyer, and so far they've been letting Vincent steer the conversation after a few polite inquiries regarding her relationship with Jacques Renard and her association with the PKE Group.  Vincent has been very willing to talk, so it hasn’t been that hard. 

Vincent gives a snort of laughter and lowers her hand to fiddle with the cuff around her wrist.  "Zat was Montclair - 'e, et Peddicort, zey saw some’zing, in ze Sonny Park incident and tried to ... comment-dit-on... ah, oui, _capitalize_ on it?"

She levels Joan with a stare that Joan returns.  She’s completely shell-shocked, not entirely sure who ‘Montclair’ is, or what exactly he was able to see in her relationship with Moriarty and how things with Sonny Park had played out.  Almost distractedly, Joan reaches up and touches her shoulder, where the scar twists under her shirt.  It still hurts on occasion, and Joan knows it’s all in her head.  She wants to take a moment, to push the thoughts out of her mind.  To read that damn book and see if she can find peace again.  A peace where Moriarty’s mocking face isn’t staring back at her every time she closes her eyes.

Under the table, Sherlock's leg is bouncing a mile a minute, and Joan's about to slap him to get him to stop when his leg stills.  "What of Moriarty?" he inquires.  "Those dead girls have nothing to do with that organization."  Joan notices that he's careful not to refer to Moriarty's gender, which seems like almost a moot point at this point - maybe it's a return for Moriarty being so evasive about it, maybe he's genuinely concerned for her safety.

Waving her hand dismissively, Vincent confirms Moriarty's theory in one gesture.  "A distraction, no’zing more.  Zey were meant to draw you in sooner, zough.  I did not zink it would take so long, zough."  She looks at Joan for a long time, and Joan shifts uncomfortably under her gaze.  "Moriarty, zough, it is personal.  We 'ave 'ad our dealings, zey did not go well."

Becker steps in then, clamping down on the conversation and leaving Joan with even more questions than before.  They get slowly to her feet, and Joan can see that it's nearly ten o'clock.  She's exhausted from the day she's had.

Due to the lateness of the hour and Marcus' reluctance to wake up a judge to approve a bail hearing, they decide that Vincent is going to spend the night locked up in the cells in the basement of the precinct.  Becker had tried to fight them on it, but eventually had relented when Vincent herself said that it was alright.  Joan is grateful, that she's willing to do it, though.  She cannot shake the feeling of Vincent's intense gaze her - her pronouncement that Joan was the most important of her targets.  Joan knows that this isn’t the end, even though both Sherlock and Marcus would like to make it seem like it is.

She doesn't like being afraid like this.  Joan has known fear, she's known terror and she's done things fueled only by her wits, a man's chest lying open before her blade - and yet this is different.  This is a powerless sort of a fear, one that she cannot escape though her own self-reliance.

She can’t trust herself, not with this.

The feeling gnaws at her as she waits for Sherlock and Marcus to finish processing Camille Vincent - arguing the whole way with Becker, who seems dead set against everything they’re doign.    Joan watches as they talk in low voices at the top of the stairs, her mind drifting.

What is it about her, what is it about Sherlock?  Weaknesses are something that Moriarty exploits, she wouldn't have any.  At least not willingly.  Joan knows that Moriarty has overlooked her feelings for Sherlock before.  Just thinking about all that’s come before has Joan feeling the fear in her morph into something akin to anger.  Their truce, their fucking truce over the Sonny Park thing, that's what's throwing all of this off.  Somehow, in that moment when Sherlock agreed to her help, the PKE Group became aware of just how important Sherlock - and by extension Joan - was to Moriarty.

Joan bites her lip, nervous energy crackling all around her.

Marcus drives them home and doesn't come in when Joan offers to let him see Moriarty's notes. "I don't want to see them; I don't want to know about them.  They don't exist, and if you've got any sense at all you will wrap this case up without them."

She can see his point and tells him as much, a tired smile on her face as she watches him turn the car around and head back up the street, two red lights in the growing night.

Inside, Sherlock disappears off into the kitchen to 'make soup' and Joan trails after him once she's taken off her shoes.  "How does the PKE Group know about your relationship with Moriarty?"  Joan asks as he digs out a saucepan and the can opener.  He pulls down a can of Progresso from the cabinet over the sink and flips it over in his hands, before turning to look at her, his expression thoughtful.

"I suppose because of her rule," he says, setting the saucepan on the stove and flipping the burner on.

Joan sighs and steps more fully into the room.  The newspapers are still neatly folded on the table and there's a mug blotted with lipstick that isn't a shade Joan wears in the sink.  Little reminders of their intruder are everywhere and Joan _hates_ them all.  "The rule about not hurting  you?"

"Or you," Sherlock points out, twisting the can opener.  He fiddles with it for longer than he needs to before he turns to look at her, his expression unreadable.  "But that isn't your point, is it?"

It really wasn’t.  "Marcus was right, we shouldn't have let her get involved with this," Joan says.  It pains her, really, to say it, because the gesture by Moriarty is one that she appreciates on some level.  Vincent has given them an address to where the girls that the PKE Group employed, and Vincent's lip had curled with the word, were kept.  Marcus had sent a unit out to collect them and make sure they were alright.  "It was stupid."

"A means to an end," Sherlock agrees, getting down two bowls.  Joan's stomach growls, as if on cue, and she goes to get down glasses for water and to wash some spoons.

They eat in relative silence, until Sherlock, some fifteen minutes later, leans over and touches Joan's forearm.  She jumps, flinching away from the touch and sloshing water from the glass in her hand all over her sleeve.

"It is admirable," he says.  "How well you hide your recovery, Joan."  She looks at him, her eyes flinty and makes no move to dry her sleeve as she sets her water glass down once more.  "Ire- _Moriarty_ saw it before I ever did."

" _She_ assumed that I was broken.  You never did that," Joan replies, trying to tell him everything that she cannot say, about how grateful she is that he never ever assumed anything about her recovery.  He just accepted it, accepted it in the same manner that Joan understood that he sometimes needed to go to meetings by himself, that he needed to sit around people who understood the daily struggle with sobriety in a way that Joan – having never been addicted to anything other than running – could never understand. 

"You are the strongest person I know," Sherlock says in a quiet voice, not meeting her eyes.  Joan feels her cheeks burn, because that is high praise, coming from him.  "I fear that this might be too much, even for you though."

Joan says nothing at all.

-

Collins has spent the better part of two hours scowling at Jamie.  She is standing the window of her hotel room, her arms wrapped around herself, looking down at the street below.  She's three Advil and a large cup of coffee into her headache and it's showing no signs of letting up.  As such, her patience is at an all-time low and she's caught up in debating Collins' overall usefulness to the organization and weighing it against her want to test out her theory about carving his adam's apple from his throat while he’s still breathing.

"What?" she finally demands, turning to stare at him.  Her tone begs no argument and his eyes widen as he sees the look on her face.  Her mask must have slipped, _bugger_ ; she tries to school her features back to neutral _._

"Montclair's kid was a bad move," he says, tugging at his collar.  There is nervous energy crackling around every aspect of his body.  He's afraid of her, as well he should be.  Jamie has no qualms with killing him, but she does like him a great deal more than Westin right now.  He must know that, otherwise he would be silent and keeping his eyes to himself.  "Unless you're willing to eliminate her, she is a liability."

"Perhaps I am willing to kill her, Mr. Collins," Jamie says, wishing that she could rub at her temples.  She knows better than to show weakness around her men, she cannot be weak, so she must be more ruthless than any of them so that they will continue to fear and respect her.  It is how this game works, after all, and Jamie’s been playing it close to half her life. "Perhaps I will spare her if Montclair holds up his end of the bargain."

The pieces are already starting to fall into place.  Sheng has informed them of Vincent's surrender, and her fancy lawyer provided by the PKE Group.  She's locked up overnight, at least, which is one less thing for Jamie to have to worry about this evening.  If she can ensure that Montclair and his cohorts leave the city without bloodshed, it would be ideal.  Her fingerprints are all over this as it is and she doesn't wish to be any more exposed.

"Sam agrees with me," Collins continues, as though he hasn't heard her.

Calmly, Jamie crosses to the room service tray of her half-eaten dinner and picks up the exceptionally dull steak knife that had come up with the plate.  She runs her thumb over the blade, not listening to Collins as he continues to speak, his dark eyes watching her every move.

"Mr. Collins," she says, lowering her arm to let the knife dangle between two fingers, loosely at her side.  "Do I pay you to question my decisions?"

"No, mum," He says.  His eyes are instantly downcast.  "It's jus' that Sam and I are worried..."

The knife flies out of her hand so quickly that he scarcely has time to react, to lean his head to one side and let it wiz by his cheek, blade slicing into the soft skin there before it continues on its trajectory and buries itself two inches into the wall. He stares at her, shocked, as he raises two shaking fingers to press against the cut on his cheek.

"I will take your concern under advisement," Jamie says shortly, her voice cool and betraying nothing of her annoyance at his insubordination or her anger at the powerless, desperate feeling that plagues her.  Montclair had figured her out; he'd figured her and had made a move that was sure to draw her out into the open.  It was unacceptable.  Jamie was going to ensure that he never made such a mistake again. "Westin's as well.  This is the only option we have, Mr. Collins, and I will thank you to not make me feel as though my hand is being forced any more than it already is."  She turns and crosses back to the window.  She is waiting for confirmation from Sheng that the girls that the PKE Group has locked up in some hellish warehouse somewhere out on Long Island have been found by the police before she contacts Montclair.

She is going to kill one of them, probably Phillipe.  She doesn't particularly care for killing children.  Bringing the PKE Group's leaders down from five to three will surely deal a large enough blow to their organization that she can take over their counterfeit operation and finally be done with them, once and for all.

Coming back here has painted some things clear as day to Jamie, and she doesn't like the way that the images reflect back up at her.  She stares down at the hotel desk littered with notes and half-finished sketches - a repository of all that she has thought of in the past twenty-four hours.  One thread continues to come up, again and again, the confusion, the realization, and the frustration at her lack of understanding _why_.

She does not need interpersonal relationships.  She's never needed them.  She prefers the solitary life, and yet Montclair has figured out her game with Watson before they’ve fully engaged.  He’s figured her out and completely forced her hand.

Collins leaves the room and the door closes with a quiet click behind him.  Jamie leans against the window. It is still warm from the sun that had set an hour or so ago and looks down at the street below.  She does not want to be with Watson, or even to have her like she had Sherlock.  She likes their game, the sparring, the war waged with words and actions meant to rankle and to draw ire.  There is … what shocks Jamie the most about it is that there is what feels like a genuine affection there, and it feels utterly alien to her.

She wants Watson to cast off the mantle of Sonny Park and become herself once more. She wants Watson to shake free of her melancholy and to come after her, to follow the perfect trail of breadcrumbs Jamie has left.  She wants to peel apart Joan Watson and look inside her, to see how she ticks, because it's only then that Jamie will know how she was beaten and how she will surely be beaten again.

The problem is that Jamie plays to win and she cannot win if half of her game pieces are broken or absent.

Her phone buzzes from the table and she bends, moving aside a sketch of Watson, half asleep and reading the sports pages to pick it up.  Sheng has confirmed that the rest of the PKE Group's girls have been found alive. It is time, it seems, for action.

She lets out a long, slow, breath of air and crosses to where the knife is still embedded in the wall, Collins' blood wet upon it.  He has a point, as does Westin.  Her hand has been forced and this is not the best outcome.  Nor is it the most well-thought-out course of action she’s ever come up with.

Sheng has sent another text, this one saying that Vincent will likely make bail first thing in the morning.  Jamie reads it, lips pulling downwards into a frown.  This may be the sort of situation where force will become a necessity.

"Mr. Collins," she calls, pitching her voice so that he is sure to hear it through the two closed doors between them.  "Get the car."

He grunts out a response and Jamie crosses the room in three quick strides.  She dry swallows two more pills and takes a quick detour into the bathroom to make sure that she doesn’t look as haggard as she feels.  She looks like death warmed over, obviously overtired and clearly under some strain.  She tries to cover it up with a scowl and make up as she always does,  tugging on a blazer and tucking her gun into the back of her pants.  She doesn’t think it will be needed, but it’s practically a security blanket for Jamie these days. 

Her head is pounding when she pulls open the door to the closet where they've put Marie Montclair.  "Are you ready to see your father?" Jamie asks her in cool, even French, bending and untying her legs from the chair.  "If you play this right, you just might live through this day."

"You're a monster," Marie's eyes say.  Her mouth is bound, which Jamie likes.  She isn't much in the mood for conversation anyway.  Still, it's a pretty mouth and Jamie wonders what sort of sin she could entice out of it, given enough time.  She leaves Marie to Westin when he appears in the doorway and goes to collect the rest of her things.

She lingers, maybe just a little too long, over her half-finished sketch of Joan Watson.  Her Watson.  She is going to rip her away from Sherlock like tape from skin, hard and fast, in one grand gesture.

It's going to be beautiful.

Jamie tucks a spare clip into her jacket pocket and heads towards the door, cutting off the lights as she leaves.  It is time to end this.

-

Joan is on her way upstairs, finally to bed, when Sherlock's phone rings.  He answers the call, his expression going soft, and then satisfied.  Joan feels the breath she wasn't aware she was holding escape her lips, it isn't Moriarty then.  Thank _god_.

"Do you want us to come and help with the processing?"  Sherlock asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet and then crossing the library to stare up at Joan through the rungs of the banister.  "It is rather late Marcus."  There's a pause, and then Sherlock lets out a quiet sound that could be a laugh.  "Alright, first thing tomorrow.  Tell me, are they alright?"  His brow furrows and he adds hastily, "I mean, as alright as one would be in such a situation."

Smiles to not come easy to Sherlock - Joan's come to know that that over the course of their partnership - so when she sees his face split into a wide, relieved smile; she knows its good news.

Coming back down a few steps, Joan hovers while Sherlock gets off the phone with Marcus.  "The girls are okay?" she asks.

"They've been kept much in the conditions that Donka described to us when we interviewed her, but yes, they seem fine – physically at least.  US-CIS has them now; we've been invited to help interview them in the morning."  Sherlock sets his phone down on the arm of the couch and looks up at her though the banister.  "Perhaps we will be able to amass enough evidence to take down the PKE Group ourselves."

Joan smiles weakly, because she's pretty sure that they won't.  There are too many variables, and the leaders of the PKE Group are far too careful to allow themselves to be caught.  They're going to get Camille Vincent because that is what is easy, another scapegoat like Jacques Renard or Sonny Park.

"I hope so," she says, and finds herself swallowing down a yawn.  It has been a ridiculously long day, and she's bone tired.  She glances up the stairs and looks back at Sherlock.  "Are you going to sleep?  I'm beat."

"In a bit," He says distractedly, already reaching for his phone once more.  It will be hours before he sleeps, if he does so at all.

Joan shakes her head and heads up the stairs, her mind preoccupied by the defeated feeling that she cannot shake.  There is a nagging feeling of worry in her too, not just over the fact that Elbam Becker is a tenacious lawyer who will have Camille Vincent out on bail no matter what the District Attorney as to say about it.  She's worried about the fact that this is three times now, that they've gotten involved with the PKE Group, and twice now that things have escalated to the point where Joan is fearing, probably not actively enough, but still, _fearing_ for her life.

"How much of this is just about Moriarty?"  Joan wonders out loud to her empty bedroom.  There are no answers, there never are.  Joan digs her pajamas out from under her pillow and begins to change.  On days like this, when they break a case wide open, or apprehend a suspect, the hours seem to stretch and blend together and Joan's half-exhausted mind is having a hard time believing that she'd spent the morning trading barbed insults with Moriarty over coffee and the sports pages.  Or that Moriarty had so brazenly stolen their crossword after Joan had thrown her out.

She'd come up here to plug her phone in earlier, and it is currently blinking a new text message notification.  Joan pulls her shirt over her head and bends to look at it; it's from a blocked number and she's about to just delete it without looking at it, because she wants to go to bed and not to deal with Moriarty's stupid games and doublespeak right now; when something stops her.  She has to know what it says, because it's going to bug her if she doesn't look.

Feeling exceptionally weary, Joan slides her finger over the screen and punches in her (mostly worthless) unlock code.  The text is in Moriarty's usual cipher, and Joan scowls and goes back to look at the timestamp, irritated that she knows how to read it so well now.  She rearranges the symbols into words on the back of a bodega receipt with the chewed pen that lives on her bedside table for just such purposes.

_Despite your wish that I not care for your safety, Watson, I do.  Tread carefully; you are on a razor's edge._

Joan puts aside her phone and scowls down at the paper and her slanted scrawl.  She can hear Oren's voice in her head, back when they were so very young, joking about doctor's handwriting.  It, like everything about Oren, is a kind and gentle memory and Joan wishes that this case could be over, so she could spend time with him before he went back to home and was too far away to see regularly.

The text has her troubled, and Joan sits cross legged in the middle of her bed, skin sweaty and sticking to the sheets.  Sherlock hadn't told her that it was hot in her room, almost irritatingly so, when he'd offered it to her when she’d first come to live here.  The air conditioning is whining; kicking back into life, and Joan's grateful that Sherlock's bothered to turn it on.  He usually just loses his shirt if he gets hot.  Occasionally his pants too, but Joan really doesn't like thinking about his penchant for colorful socks and how it extends to his underwear.

Why does Moriarty care?  Why does she want to fix this situation that she had nothing to do with causing and everything to do with resolving?

Joan feels torn, she’s of two minds about the whole thing.  She closes her hand into a fist and crumples the receipt into a tiny ball and pitches it towards the trashcan on the far side of her bedside table.  She doesn't care what Moriarty thinks.  Joan doesn't want to play the game that she's been offered, time and time again.  Moriarty's trail of breadcrumbs is perfectly laid, and Joan knows that only death lies at the end of that path.

"So change the game," Joan says to herself, and reaches for her phone.  She doesn't bother with the cipher, because she's sure that that will irritate Moriarty.

_If I fall, would you be there to catch me?  Or would I end up just like Sherlock?_

-

 _Watson_ , Jamie muses as she stares down at her phone, _is playing a very dangerous game indeed_.  She doesn't reply to the text, because she cannot begin that conversation right now.  She needs her attention focused on the here and the now.

"Something come up?" Westin asks from the other side of Marie Montclair.  He's got his gun out, cradled loosely between his two hands, and his expression is grim and drawn.

"No," Jamie answers, and powers off her phone.  It is an unnecessary distraction.  "Pull off here," she says, leaning forward and tapping Collins on the arm.  He has a bandaid on his cheek now, and it looks comical sticking out, stark white, against his dark skin. "We'll meet them in the middle."

Montclair is waiting outside of his car already, hands plunged into the pockets of his trench that it is entirely too hot outside for. Jamie doesn't envy him as she gets out of the car and waits for Westin to haul Marie out as well.

 _Not that it matters much_ , she supposes, _he's going to be dead in a few minutes._

Sheng's series of texts during Camille Vincent's interview had been enlightening, to say the least. It had not occurred to Jamie, at least not significantly, that her actions regarding Joan Watson's safety during the Sonny Park would have clued both Peddicort _and_ Montclair into some of the reasons why.

Joan Watson was – _is_ – her downfall; Jamie knew that better than anyone.  What she did not realize, or at least what she had not realized, was how deep and all-consuming her need to understand why Watson had beaten her so easily was.  Montclair and Peddicort, obviously, had figured out that in order to draw her out they had to go after Watson.  And Sherlock, Jamie supposes, feeling a twinge of something else inside her.  Sherlock would always be her most perfect toy, after all.

"Mr. Montclair," Jamie announces, stepping forward and tugging her gun from where it'd been tucked into the back of her pants.

"Moriarty," he replies, his voice tight.  He is also armed, but Jamie is younger than him, and probably quicker on the draw.  She'll get him before he can get her and revel in it as he falls.

His face is drawn and tired, full of worry that Jamie thinks is entirely put on.  Marie, as long as he complies with her wishes, would surely make it out of this alive.  He must know that.  Jamie doesn't want to start a war, after all, even if that is what the PKE Group is definitely gunning for. "It is done." Montclair announces grandly.  "The police have taken Vincent into custody."

"Yes, I know," Jamie replies smoothly, a smile tugging at her lips.  "You sent your best lawyer down there to make sure that she didn't spend more than one night in jail, didn't you Phillipe?"

He swallows and looks away, his lips drawn into a thin line of concentration.  He's holding himself together by a thread, by the muzzle of Westin's gun as it's pressed to the soft underside of his daughter's chin.  Jamie wants to nod, wants to tell Westin to pull the trigger, just to see what he'd do.

"Your organization will leave this city."  It's a statement, not a question, and Jamie forces a small smile onto her face.  It's all teeth and ill will in a single, empty gesture, threatening and predatory.  She wants him shaking in his too-plain, department store shoes.  "I'd hate to get into a turf war with you, Phillipe."

He swallows and nods just once, his eyes fixed on his daughter.  "It will take some time, to sell off various enterprises, set up subsidiaries..."

"Marie," Jamie says, and her voice is very quiet.  It is just barely loud enough that she is certain that Marie will hear her over the roar of the city around them. "Did you hear what you father just said?"

Westin lowers his gun and rips the tape from her mouth.  Her lips are bleeding and lack the prettiness of before.  Jamie is almost disappointed.  Westin balls up the tape and shoves it into his pocket when she speaks.  "I did," she says and her voice sounds hoarse from the tape and the fact that they’d left her in that closet for a long time without water.

"Tell me something Marie, do you think that it is in good form to stall for time when such a polite request has been made?"  Jamie's eyes never leave Montclair's.  She's watching him closely, looking for the moment, the very instant when he realizes that he's not getting out of this alive.  That's the moment when she's going to pull the trigger.

"No - " Marie is sharper than she looks, and she's guessed the game, pulling away from Westin and fighting against the ties around her hands with all of her might.  "Papa, run!" she adds, language skills slipping as desperation mounts.  She sounds like a child.

"You wouldn't dare," is all Phillipe Montclair gets out before Jamie levels her gun at his chest and fires.  Blood splatters her cheeks and her blazer and she doesn't care, watching as he slumps down against the bulletproof windows his car.  Jamie follows him with her gun and shoots him once more in the head for good measure.

"Marie, dear," she says, not turning around.  "Please tell Tenimont and the others that I will not tolerate their stalling on this matter.  They are to leave the city.  You may stay, once you get out of hospital."  She turns then, smiling cruelly at the girl, half supported by Westin as her world crumbles around her.  She's sobbing, wailing really, and it's an infernal noise.

Jamie turns and catches Collins' arm as he walks up, obviously intent on making this look like a carjacking gone horribly wrong.  The gun that Jamie's used was used in two other gang-related shootings within the past two months, and they'll have suspects before the night is out, probably.  Delinquent youths with no sense at all.  "Twice, I think," she says, inclining her head towards Marie’s shaking, sniveling form, "But avoid anything too vital."

"Yes, mum," he says and takes her gun from her when she hands it over, fingers already sliding over the black metal and slowly disassembling it.  Jamie bends and picks up a shell casing, and then another.  The third has rolled to rest right before Marie's feet.

"You will tell them, won't you, Marie?" Jamie asks, a wicked smile on her face.  She touches Marie's still bleeding lips and sighs.  The girl looks pitiful.

She's in the car before Collins shoots her, once in the arm and once in the leg, shrugging out of her jacket bundling it into the dump bag at her feet.  It's a shame it's ruined.  She'd rather liked that one.

A weight has been lifted from her shoulders and Jamie leans back, head tilting back and staring up at the roof of the car as she relishes the rush of the kill and the pretty sound Marie Montclair makes as she screams.

-

Joan never thought that this part would be the hardest of them all. She's sitting an uncomfortable chair at the New York branch of Immigration and Custom Service’s offices, across from an emaciated girl who cannot be more than sixteen or seventeen years old.  She's wearing a faded old sweatshirt with the Rangers logo on it and pajama pants printed with a Sanrio character that Joan cannot place.  She looks clean, at least.  Marcus has told her that they'd been offered a place to clean themselves off once they'd been processed.

"My name is Joan," she says with a small smile.  They've given her this girl because Joan speaks enough Mandarin to be able to communicate with her, and so far she's the one that seems to have the least English out of all of them.  The girl looks up sharply, one hand flying up to play with her stringy ponytail.  Joan wonders if this is the first kind word anyone's said to her in a long time. "I wanted to talk to you about what you've been through, if that's okay."

The picture that is starting to emerge is horrifying - and there is very little that Joan wants more at the moment than to bring the PKE Group to its knees to face up to this abuse.  These girls are starved, desperate, and taken in by the worst sort of johns imaginable.  How this had ever been a viable income for the PKE Group was completely beyond her.  These are girls from China, from rural Russia, from Vietnam.  Sherlock's speaking to the Russian girls as best he can, but some of the more rural dialects are beyond him - they grasping at straws for evidence.  There’s nothing

None of these girls know who had done this to them, but this girl is able to tell Joan, in fragmented Mandarin and a bit of English when Joan doesn't remember the words, about the girls that have disappeared.  Katia was from Eastern Russia, the girl explained, near Mongolia.  She spoke enough of the languages there that she was able to communicate with everyone fairly well.

"That was why they took her," the girl, Song Xi, explains.  "Because she was so good with the languages.  The ..." and she fumbles for a word, flushing slightly.  " _Black lady_ ," she says eventually, "Picked her because she was smart."

Vincent had picked Katia because Katia had had the ear of the brothel.  Joan's stomach twists in horror just thinking about it.  Vincent had taken out their uniting force when nothing else was working to catch the eye of Sherlock Holmes.  There was such a cruelty about it, and the way that this girl - and she is no more than that - looks up at Joan and asks what happens next.

Joan doesn't know the words in her language to tell her that she doesn't know.  She smiles sadly and shakes her head.  "I can't answer that question," she confesses. She casts about in her mind, desperate for the words that won't come - they're like a void - a blank space where her mind supplies the words in two other languages and sighs.  She hates this and the feeling of helplessness that fills her as she tries to make herself remember the words.  "I don't know," she adds in English, shrugging and raising her hands.  "They will take good care of you," she promises and she hopes that they will.

She leaves the room some ten minutes later to meet Sherlock and a grim-faced Marcus out in the hallway.  It feels grossly sterile here.  _Othering_ , Joan thinks, because that is what this place is.  It is a place where they put the so-called undesirable people who have found their ways into this country.

And to what end?  To be turned to that fate?  Death, Joan thinks, might have been preferable.

"I want to take them down," Joan says and her hands are shaking as she speaks.  If Sherlock notices, he doesn't acknowledge it, and Joan's grateful.  "Vincent isn't enough.  She isn't responsible for bringing those girls here, she isn't the one that sold them a fake dream and brought them here to do this..." Joan lets out a frustrated noise and casts her hand back towards the door that she'd just come from.  "Now they're probably going to get deported, aren't they?"

Marcus' lips are drawn into a thin line.  "The Captain's been in with the director all morning - apparently the Patriot Act makes situations like this even more of a struggle."

"They aren't terrorists, Marcus."  The mere suggestion of something like that is enough to send Joan into a full-on rant, and she's about to bite her tongue and swallow it down when she sees the look on his face.  He knows it as well as she does, but he can't - or doesn't want - to do anything about it.  "They're traumatized girls who have been through a terrible ordeal."  She wraps her arms around herself, knowing that she has no frame of reference, but at the same time being acutely aware of how close she came to becoming just like these girls.  "How can the police, the people who are supposed to protect them, just turn their backs?"

He sighs and Sherlock puts a comforting hand on Joan's upper arm for the briefest of seconds before he turns to Marcus.  "The Captain will ensure their safety, should they have to be returned home?"

Marcus shoves his hands into his pockets.  "None of these girls know anything about the PKE Group much beyond the tattoo that they've all got.  The US Attorney wants to grant them asylum, but if they've got no evidence or anything to add to the case, they have to jump through those stupid Patriot Act hoops and will probably end up locked up at some INS facility for a while."

"Where, if they didn't have radical leanings, they might pick them up," Sherlock finishes with a frown.

"Did Ms. Xi-"  Marcus begins.

"Her last name is Song," Joan says, correcting his confusion. "And no, she didn't have much to add other than that Camille Vincent apparently killed Katia because she was something of a favorite with the girls.  She had been picking off the younger, more sickly of them before.  Xi says that one of the girls tried to run away and a man with a suit - she'd never seen him before - came and with Vincent and indicated that Katia was the ringleader.  She was next."

"A man with a suit..." Sherlock rubs the back of his head.  "We've just narrowed the list of possible complicit parties to the entire male population of the city."  He closes his eyes taking in a deep breath, and Joan watches, almost hears him count to ten before he opens them again.  "I don't think we're going to get more out of these girls unless we're able to find something on the property."

"Yeah, the CSU guys are all over that," Marcus says.  "And we've got a name on the man who rented it - French guy, maybe Québécois.  Phillipe Montclair."  He tugs his notebook from his pocket and flips it open.  "He's got a daughter in the city, goes to NYU, but no local address."

"Could we go talk to the daughter?"  Joan wants to know.

Sherlock eyes her for a moment and then shrugs.  "Don't see why not, but what's the likelihood that a college student is going to know why her father is renting a dilapidated warehouse way out on Long Island?"

Joan sees his point and is about to agree with him when Marcus' phone rings.  He answers it, and his expression goes stony.  "Thank you," he says when he hangs up.  He looks from Sherlock to Joan, tucking his phone back into his pocket.  "Camille Vincent made bail.  They put a uniform tail on her and she's already slipped them - Elbam Becker called us when she didn't show up at her office for a meeting."

It strikes Joan as funny, in retrospect, that her first thought is that Moriarty got to her.  She doesn't think that Moriarty would actually go so far as to brazenly kill someone that the NYPD were in the middle of investigating.  Then again, Moriarty did murder Nigel Peddicort in cold blood and string up his body in the most theatrical murder Joan had ever seen in her life.

"We will take precautions," Sherlock says in a low voice. "I imagine that we should probably stay at home?"

He nods, "They'll find her."

"Oh," Sherlock says, "I don't doubt it."

It is only later, when they're leaving the Immigration and Customs office, that Joan finds herself fiddling with her phone.  She wants to ask questions, questions that she's sure will go unanswered - but she wants to prove that she can.

"What do you think will happen to them?" she asks as Sherlock starts up the block towards the subway station.  She's half a step behind him, still fiddling with her phone, debating putting it away and not dealing with her questions right now.  She wants to know though - and she's half afraid that if she does ask that she'll discover that Phillipe Montclair is dead, simply because it seems so utterly logical to kill him.

Sherlock stops, scuffed shoes drawing perfectly level with a line in the sidewalk, a barrier that they cannot cross.  "I would imagine that Captain Gregson and the US Attorney’s office will do everything in their power to keep them here and help rehabilitate them after their ordeal; however I cannot be certain that they will all be able to stay here."  He looks at Joan, a curious expression on his face.  Joan looks away after a moment.

"I hope so too," Joan answers.

"You want to ask her about Phillipe Montclair don't you?"

Joan looks up sharply.  He's got his hands clasped behind his back and looks oddly like a child in a vest and t-shirt.  Joan still isn't really sure how he can give absolutely no outward signs that he's hot when the temperature is hovering around 90. It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe, she reasons.   Along with his uncanny ability to figure out what she's thinking, or at least to guess the subject.

"I was actually thinking that he's probably dead." It sounds almost silly, and she gives Sherlock a small smile.  "You heard what Camille Vincent said when we interviewed her."

"About him and Peddicort attempting to capitalize on Moriarty's apparently weakness when it comes to you and I?"  Sherlock shakes his head.  "I assumed that they were thinking of her rule for the city."

Joan shakes her head.  She's thinking of a million things all at once; little puzzle pieces falling into place.  Moriarty wants her better - wants her over Sonny Park and his knife.  The knife that can still wrest her from the most peaceful of sleeps, a shooting pain in her arm a start reminder of all that she had survived.  Moriarty wants their game back - the game they'd started once, when Joan had seen though her as if she were glass.  Moriarty wants that game back, because Moriarty likes games.

And if Joan or Sherlock is threatened... her game pieces - and Joan hates to think of herself that way, but if she's following Moriarty's logical - her game pieces would be threatened.

"I think that Peddicort saw something in her - maybe the fact that she's still unhealthily attached to you - and she killed him for his trouble."  Joan looks down at her feet.  "I wonder if Phillipe Montclair might have been told of the secret as well."

Sherlock says nothing for a long time.  He seems to be waiting for her to come to the point on her own.  She understands that this is his way of saying that he isn't the best person to try and get inside Moriarty's head.  He's emotionally compromised when it comes to Moriarty, and probably will be for a long time.  Goodness knows she's hurt him badly enough.

"Moriarty doesn't exactly do weakness."  Joan starts again.  Sherlock nods just once, and starts to walk towards the subway station.  He's not looking at her, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped.  He's coming to the same conclusions she is, probably, and he doesn't want to hear them any more than Joan does.

She bites the inside of her lip, thinking of how Camille Vincent is running around somewhere in the city, probably out to kill them, and decides that she's not going out once they get home.  Her legs ache for a run, but that's about the last thing she should be doing until the NYPD can track down Vincent.  "And she'd definitely kill to prevent rivals from becoming aware that she'd had one."

It's a strange sort of a pronouncement, Joan hates everything about Moriarty sometimes, but it's so ruthlessly practical that she can appreciate the logic in it.

The ride home is largely silent, and the sun is starting to dip below the horizon when they climb up the stairs and out of the subway stop that's three blocks from home.  Joan pulls out her sunglasses and, after a moment's rummaging, finds a pair of Sherlock's that have fallen down to the bottom of her purse.  He likes the cheap, drugstore pairs that look obnoxiously horrible on his face, and he smiles gratefully at her as she passes them over.

"Tell me, do you keep any lamps in your purse?"  He jokes.

She smiles.  "Nah.  Just a few potted plants.  The lamps are in my other purse."

He tilts his head back to look at the sky, cast in an orange light above their heads.  "When I was very young, that was the one film we were allowed to watch - my brother and I."  His scowls and looks away.  "My father had a low opinion of the film industry, but he always held Julie Andrews in high regard."

"So you were just like any other kid your age and snuck watching SNL once he went to bed?"  Joan asks.  He looks at her askance and she sticks her tongue out at him.  "Oh wait," she adds.  "I forgot you were a perfect angel child."

Sherlock leans over and bumps his shoulder against her's and raises his eyebrows.  "We all have our moments of rebellion Watson; some of us are just a bit more clever than others about getting away with things."

"What makes you think I got caught?"  Joan asks, incredulous.  She was very sneaky, thank you, and having an exceptionally rebellious little brother was very helpful in that regard.  Sometimes she feels guilty for getting Oren into trouble.

He tilts his head to one side. "You didn't," he says at length and Joan wonders if he's talking about childhood slights against brothers any more at all.  "But you felt so guilty afterwards that you'd almost wished you had."

It irritates her that he knows this about her - but he probably knows her best of all.  "Maybe," she says.  "Maybe Oren was a little shit who deserved it."

"I doubt that."

-

The NYPD are fools for letting Camille Vincent walk out of their grasp so easily.  Elbam Becker had done her job and had done it well.  There was no way that she would be found in the city again.  The only question on Jamie's mind now was if she would consider it a matter personal or professional pride to have left her last job with the PKE Group incomplete.

Jamie likes to think she if she were in Vincent's shoes, she would cut her losses and run, but she knows herself and her hubris takes her far too close to the sun sometimes.

Vincent, she thinks, is much the same way.  A killer's only as good as her latest kill, after all.  In a business so deeply rooted in reputation, one failed job might as well be a retirement notice - or a death warrant.  She will go after them; it's only a matter of time.

Collins had come in that morning to announce that the NYPD was looking into Phillipe Montclair and Jamie had felt her irritation spike at his knowing and pointed look when he announces this.  He's got to watch his tongue or Jamie is going to cut it out of his mouth.  She doesn't have a tolerance for insolence and he's pushing it.

"Of course they're looking into it, the property where those girls were kept was in his name, wasn't it?"  She'd shook her head. They have a name and nothing more than that.  Marie Montclair knows better than to talk.  There is no where she can hide where Jamie won't find her, and then it will be two in the chest, same as her father.  Marie knows this, she won't talk.  Jamie has practically gift-wrapped the case for the NYPD anyway, and they'd met well outside of the 11th Precinct's jurisdiction - across the river as well.  It would take time for the connection to be made, but by then, Jamie would be well and away from New York.

She's spent the day making arrangements to leave the city and meeting with lawyers, distractedly checking her phone for updates from the ever-watchful Sheng (Westin had spelled him for a few hours that morning so he could get some rest) to make sure that Vincent had not decided to fulfill her contract after all.

So far, it has been quiet, but then again, Sherlock and Watson had spent the entire day inside a secure facility where someone like Vincent would be stuck on the outside of looking in.  Jamie supposes now, as the sun starts to set and night settles in, the danger they're in is about to skyrocket.

She's booked on a flight out of New York in the morning, under the same alias as before. They've been checking the manifest and using Westin's TSA connections to red-flag a few people that Jamie does not wish to fly with and getting them bumped to other flights.  She's still not sure that she's going to leave just yet, but she wants the option.

Vincent is a loose end and Jamie loathes loose ends.  She's worried that Marie Montclair might become one in time, but for now she's heavily sedated in a hospital bed, traumatized and probably not going to be speaking to anyone for some time. Jamie's made contact with a few of her better people in the city to tentatively watch her, and to eliminate her if need be.

Her phone buzzes.  Sheng has a location on Vincent.

"Mr. Collins," she calls.  It's looking like it’s threatening to rain outside, and she's shrugging on a jacket and lacing up her books.  It's really too hot for them, but she is going to need to be able to move and move quickly.  Sheng texts again, saying that Holmes and Watson are going to end up in the crosshairs of this.  "Get the car."

She has Sheng on the phone as she gathers the rest of her things, shoving gun and silencer into her purse.  "Get them out of there," she hisses into the phone and he grunts his acknowledgement before starting to speak.  Jamie can't quite make out what he says, though.  There's a garbled sound and a shot rings out clear as day over the line.  She pulls the phone away from her ear, not particularly keen on listening to Sheng die.

Collins finds her standing with the phone held away from her ear, purse slung over her shoulder, her lips twisted into an angry sneer.  "Vincent has made this personal," she grinds out, pushing past him and out of the room.  She's seething, and they're unprotected.

She will not have them hurt.

"Drive," she tells Collins as he hurries into the car after her.  "Track Sheng's phone, they can't be far from there."

She texts Watson, unsure if a warning is really what she wants to give.  She swallows, stares at the text, no cipher and no tricks.

_Are you safe?_

It sounds almost childish and she hates it, but knows that it's all that she can say.  She doesn't want to worry Watson if there's no need too, if she can get to Vincent before Vincent gets to them.

Watson does not respond.

Jamie checks her gun.  She takes it apart and puts it back together, hardly looking at it as she does it.  She screws on the silencer and takes a deep breath, and then another.  She has two spare clips and she intends to use them all in Camille Vincent's fool body.  She has gone too far.  Pack her full of lead so maybe she'll understand.

Watson will not understand.  She will want, like she wanted with Sonny Park, to bring justice, not just closure to all the people that Vincent has hurt.  Jamie doesn't know if she can stomach that this time.  It is not what she wants.

-

"Someone is following us, Watson," Sherlock says when they're about a block away from home.

Joan glances over her shoulder - the road is devoid of cares.  "Moriarty's man?"

He shakes his head.  "The tread's different, lighter."  He appears to be listening hard, and then the color completely drains from his face.  He reaches forward, grabs her hand, "We have to get off the street," he says, and pulls her down an alley and through someone's back patio.

Joan hears her phone buzz in her purse but doesn’t think to grab it.  Sherlock’s fingers are tight around her own, pulling her through patios and around trash bins.  Joan turns, looking over her shoulder to see a tall figure in a black hoodie coming down the alleyway towards them.

Sherlock pulls left, into a house that it takes Joan a moment to place the house – unoccupied and in foreclosure.  The lock box on the door has been left open, probably by the realtor and he ducks down for a moment and lets the woman in the black hood – Camille Vincent, walk past them before he slowly inches the lock box off of the door and turns the handle.

They fall back inside and Sherlock closes the door carefully, almost gingerly.  “We need to get out the front and to call Marcus,” he says, his voice barely more than a whisper as he squats and peeks through a crack in a boarded up window.  “She’s gone, call him now.”

Joan fumbles with her purse, hands reaching desperately into the blackness for her phone.  Her fingers touch keys, a wallet, the case file, a forgotten tube of sunscreen.  Finally her phone met her fingers.  She digs it out, a triumphant look on her face.

Sherlock presses a finger to his lips and makes a slashing motion across his throat.  Joan lowers the phone and steps back into the shadows.  Vincent has circled back.

He points towards the front door, which will at least put them out in the street where Joan thinks that there will be people around.  It's all the protection that they have right now - she doesn't dare call Marcus if Vincent is lurking.

They creep as quietly as they can through the empty house and Sherlock tries the door once.  It rattles against the frame but does not open.  "Damn," he hisses.  There's a lockbox on this door as well.  The windows aren't boarded up here, though.  Joan follows him over to one of them and they both try and push it open, their expressions an equal mix of grim determination and silent fear.

"How did she find us so quickly?" Joan hisses to Sherlock as they both put their shoulders into pushing up the painted-shut window in the house's front room.

He gives her a withering look.  "We do live on this street, Watson, not a block up."  He answers as though it's obvious, but it's the look in his eyes, the worried, fearful look that Joan can't shake.  He's too smart to look so scared, she thinks.  And he's definitely too over-confident in his own abilities to think that they can't get out of this situation.

The window won't go, and they both glance towards the back of the house, where they've come in.  It's too risky, Joan knows this.

"I'm going to go back around, try and make some noise and distract her," Sherlock says, her voice barely audible over the sound of Joan's heart beating fast and urgent in her ears.  "You need to get out of here, and then call Marcus."  There's a pause, because he knows what other numbers Joan has on her phone - the ones that she's not supposed to have.  He doesn't say anything, just touches her arm and vanishes back the way that they'd come, closing the door behind him.

Joan throws her shoulder into the window with no luck.  Her ears are straining to hear any noise from upstairs.  She hears nothing at all and she wants to go down there, not daring to call Marcus while she's still in the house.  The gun that Vincent is surely caring will be silenced.  She knows that she probably won't hear it, should Sherlock be shot.

She crosses the room and tries the other window, dragging her nail along the seam where it's been painted shut to no avail.  She gets a splinter in her finger and hisses in pain, pulling it out and watching as blood flows freely from her fingertip.  It's getting everywhere, it'll be a sure sign that she's here.

"Fuck," she whispers, using her sleeve to clean up the blood.  She could try the room, she supposes.  These are row houses, she could get far away in a hurry and get help.

She doesn't want to leave Sherlock, though.  He won't know - his phone apparently not with her.  He's probably left it on the coffee table or charging on the computer.  How does he not have his phone?

Joan is still standing in the front of the room, debating going upstairs and trying to get out that way, when she hears a creak of a footfall on old, unused floorboard, and then another.

Heart hammering in her chest, Joan slides her bloody finger over the screen and bunches in her unlock code quickly, ignoring the flashing notification that she has a text.  Marcus’ number is on speed-dial and she’s halfway through dialing when the door flies open, kicked from outside.

Camille Vincent stands in the doorway, clad in black jeans and a faded hoodie that Joan knows is far more expensive than it is ratty.  She has a gun in one hand and her expression is absolutely murderous.  Joan pushes herself to unsteady feet, eyes wide.  She's taking careful steps backwards, until her back is pressed against the front door, the door that they cannot get out.

"I see that you have not gotten any smarter since we last spoke, Joan Watson," Camille Vincent says. Her gun is leveled at Joan's chest and Joan knows that if she pulls the trigger, she will surely die.

She can see, in the shadows behind Vincent, Sherlock moving silently, one hand hanging limply at his side.  His shoulder is stained with blood and she forces herself to keep her eyes trained fully on Vincent.  Sherlock is carrying something, a discarded brick by the looks of it.

Joan doesn’t know his plan, but she has to keep Vincent's attention focused on her or else this will surely fail.  "Perhaps I've already called for help," she says, holding up her silent phone.  It's a gamble, a dare to see if Vincent will bite.

Vincent's eyes narrow and she steps into the room, Sherlock creeping forward as she does so.  He's right behind her now, and the shadows in the room shift just enough that she sees something and turns on one toe - her other foot planting her weight to keep her steady.  Her gun is up and ready to shoot him again, but not before he hurls the brick at her head.  It connects with the side of Vincent’s head with a sickening thump and Joan steps forward just in time to see Sherlock go flat onto the ground, Vincent holding the pistol at the place where he had been and pulling the trigger twice in short succession.  The bullets burry themselves uselessly into the wall.

Joan’s about to scream, about to hurl her purse at Vincent to get her away from Sherlock when a shock of red blossoms across Vincent's forehead and a bullet spews forth from straight between her eyes. Joan falls to the floor, her phone still clutched in her hands, and watches as the room explodes into light and sound.

It's like she's fallen into a warzone, the entire room is under siege.  She claps her hands over her head and tries not to breathe, not to think.  Not to do anything at all.  If she moves...  If she moves she could die.

It is only when Vincent’s body, now riddled with bloody holes, falls to the floor that Joan can breathe again.  It is in that shaky moment, when Joan picks herself up off the floor that she realizes just how much this has been affecting her.  Sherlock looks at her for a long time before he too gets to his feet.  He takes her phone when she holds it out to him, and stumbles out of the room.

Joan draws a shaky breath, her fingers touching her arms, her legs, her chest.  She feels no blood, only the shaking of hands that have always been so steady.  She’s slowly starting to lose it.  This… this is not how she’d intended for any of this to happen. Vincent getting out on bail had been unexpected, but to come after them hadn’t really seemed like something that she would have done.  None of this did.

The windows are completely shot out, and it’s only then that Joan feels her knees grow weak once more.  She sinks back down to the ground, breath coming in slow, shallow gasps of air.  She feels desperate, weak.  She feels like she shouldn’t still be alive.

She can hear, rather than see, feet clad in low, durable and scuffed boots cross the floor of this room.  They crunch on broken glass and shattered wood.  She looks up to see Moriarty drop to her knees before her, the gun that had probably saved their lives clattering to the floor beside them.  Moriarty’s fingers tangle in her hair and their foreheads are resting together.  Joan wants to pull away, to tell her thank you from a distance.  It feels safer than this, anything feels safer than this moment.

“Are you alright?”  All that Joan can see is genuine concern in her eyes, her lips twisted into a worried expression and she’s looking at Joan’s shaking hands with trepidation.  Her fingers never leave Joan’s hair, and they’re so close that Joan could kiss her, she could hurt her, they’re sharing the same air.  “I had not anticipated her action, and I had hoped..." She looks down to at Joan, checking, Joan realizes, for injuries.  "I was distracted by other matters.”

“Is this your way of saying you’re sorry?”  Joan asks and even her voice is shaking. Sorry for what, she cannot say.

It is then that everything starts to slide into place, the airy brush off, the constant offers of trying to fix her.  The comment that Joan cannot see what’s right in front of her nose.  Moriarty leans in, her lips brushing against Joan’s. They’re chapped and scratchy and it’s hardly more than second of a touch and Moriarty is gone.  “I will kill them all, Joan, for daring to do this to you.”  Her eyes flick down, and there is such an intensity in her gaze when she looks back up at Joan that Joan does not doubt for a second her intentions to do exactly what she says.  “If that is what you want, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Joan’s hands are still shaking, and she reaches up, fingers on Moriarty’s cheeks, streaking them with sweaty palms slick with little cuts from the glass on the floor.  The splinter still embedded in her finger.  There’s blood smeared on Moriarty's cheeks now and she looks like an ancient warrior, anointed with the blood of her... God, what is she to Joan.  “I… should say yes,” Joan chokes out, “But you know me better than that, don’t you?”

Moriarty lets out a quiet, humorless bark of laughter.  “Always moral, always good, aren’t you, Watson.”  She sits back, trailing appraising fingers down Joan’s arm, where the scar of Sonny Park’s knife is still evident underneath the fabric of her t-shirt and light jacket she’d put on earlier against the threatening rain outside.  “I’d love to corrupt you.”

“Someone has to be,” Joan replies, pulling her arm away from Moriarty’s fingers, ignoring the latter part of the comment.  She knows that that is what Moriarty wants. She’s pretty sure she’s always known it, too.  “Vincent is dead, Jamie.  That is enough for me.”  She looks down, biting at her lip.  She’s unwilling to look at Moriarty anymore.  “There has been enough death.”

She gets to her feet, and bends, picking up Moriarty’s gun.  It feels heavy in her hands, and it’s a far larger caliber than Joan would have anticipated.  In the distance, Joan hears sirens.  “You should go,” she says, twisting the gun over and turning on the safety before she hands it back to Moriarty after she gets to her feet.  They stand before each other for another long moment in silence, Moriarty shoving the gun down the back of her pants and smoothing down her jacket.

“Watson, I…” Moriarty begins, but Joan shakes her head.

“Go,” she says, stepping forward and brushing at the sweaty bangs on Moriarty’s forehead.  “I will still be here, next time.  I promised you I’d bring you down, didn’t I?”

“I was rather hoping you’d forget that.”

Joan shrugs, a smile tugging at her lips.  “Unlikely.”

Moriarty leans in then, hand catching at the back of Joan’s neck and lips pressing to her own with all the intent in the world.  “You see it now,” she says, lips moving against Joan’s as they pull away.  She leans in again, rougher this time, and Joan’s fingers tangle in her hair.  “You see why I do not think I will ever understand you.”

Joan nods just once.  Moriarty is gone in a heartbeat and she’s left in the shot-out room.  Joan inhales deeply.  She feels better than she has in months.

-

Sherlock has to get three stiches to help close the wound where Vincent's bullet grazed his arm.  He sits in triage, scowling at Joan as she gets the splinter removed from her finger in the bed next to him.

"I didn't call her," Joan says, wincing as the nurse tugs out a particularly big piece of the wood embedded in her finger.  "If that's what you want to ask me."

He shakes his head.  "It wasn't," he confesses.  He touches his shoulder and then pulls his hand away from the stark white bandage.  "I was merely thinking that this has become a rather alarming trend, since we have started to investigate the PKE Group."

"What?" Joan asks, looking away from the nurse to meet his eyes.

"Mortal peril," Sherlock says.  A long time ago, it seems, he'd promised that he would never allow harm to come to her.  "I did make you a promise," he adds.

"It's the sort of promise that's easily made but impossible to keep," Joan says, sighing.  She winces as the nurse sprays her entire finger with another round of antiseptic spray and motions for her to roll up her sleeve for a tetanus shot.  Joan braces herself for the locked, sore feeling the shot will leave.  "You can't make a promise like that, neither can I."  She smiles at him, and for the first time in a long time, doesn't think about Moriarty's book at all.  "All we can do is promise to protect each other."

He nods just once, and shifts, getting gingerly to his feet and coming to sit beside her.  "As best we can," he says, holding out his hand.

"As best we can," Joan agrees. And they shake on it.

-

**post -**

It's the end of July before Joan gets out to the beach again.  She's with Emily - a girl's day out. This is the first time she's dared to wear a bathing suit without a shirt in public (because it's too damn hot out) since Sonny Park's attack and it's the first time that Emily has seen the scar.

"He's got you playing a very dangerous game, doesn't he?" Emily asks, reaching forward, but not touching the scar on Joan's arm.

Joan passes her the sunscreen.  "It's not just him," she says.  She raises a hand and shields her eyes, looking out over the water.  She's half waiting for Emily to demand to know more, because maybe she wants something other than Sherlock's cryptic 'these-are-bad-ideas-Watson's and 'she's-evil-Watson's.  Maybe she wants to know what Emily would think of someone who's so obviously invested in keeping her safe.

How, exactly do you begin a conversation with a friend about the sociopath that's taken a liking to you.  "I seem to have found myself reenacting  _The Silence of the Lambs_ only my crazy person doesn't eat people - or at least I don't think she does. Oh, did I mention that yes, it's a girl, and yes it's Sherlock's insane ex who sent him into a depression so bad he ended up hooked on heroin?"  Yeah, that sounded like a terrible idea.

"How so?" Joan turns to look at Emily, one hand still full of sunscreen.  She's closing the top of the bottle with her free hand, looking at Joan with curious eyes, sunglasses perched on top of her head.

Joan shrugs.  "I like it too, the games I mean."  She takes the sunscreen back from Emily and motions for her to turn around so Joan can get her back.  "Only Sherlock doesn't see them as games.  They're puzzles to him."

"And they're games to you?"

No, Joan thinks.  They're an itch, a curiosity.  A set of circumstances she knows she should ignore and yet cannot. Maybe she wants her comeuppance too, after all.

"They're games to -"  She trails off, glancing up the beach and catching sight of a woman in a long white dress, a wooden box tucked under one arm and a ridiculous floppy straw hat on her head.  Joan's hand stills, half-way through smearing sunscreen down Emily's back.  She lets out a quiet chuckle and finishes her task with quick efficiency.

She wipes her hands on her thighs and grabs her windbreaker.  "I'll be right back," she says to Emily, who's rummaging through her bag for her book.

"Bathroom?" Emily asks, and she doesn't push the fact that Joan had trailed off and left her without an answer.

"Yeah," Joan lies and she hates that it's so easy. Living with Sherlock has made it come easily to her.  She zips up her windbreaker and moves on unsteady feet around their carefully kept sand-free towels.  "I'll be back in a few."

She doesn't run over the sand, or even walk hurriedly.  She picks up a few shells that look interesting - and has a pocket full of mostly yellow and orange jingle shells for her trouble, as well as a few pieces of sea glass.

"Are you following me?"  Joan calls over the sound of waves, standing ankle deep in the surf.

Jamie Moriarty's hat is truly ridiculous, and her face is half hidden in shadow as she stares openly at Joan.  She's being committed to memory, Joan realizes.  It's unnerving, and she shifts from foot to foot.

"No," she says, and her tone is oddly evasive.  "I simply wanted some sun."

Joan rolls her eyes at the lie and steps out of the surf and into hot, dry sand.  It sticks to her feet and is instantly itchy.  "Okay," she says, because it's the most transparent lie she thinks Moriarty has ever told her.

There's a smile on Jamie Moriarty's lips as Joan draws level with her.  "I've been cooped up in airplanes and hotels for entirely too long, Joan Watson, being out of doors is refreshing."

"There are better beaches, like, pretty much anywhere else in the world," Joan points out.

"Yes, but they don't have such wonderful scenery."

Joan scowls at her and they lapse into an almost comfortable silence.  She remembers Emily, sitting at their towels almost guiltily a few long moments later and glances sheepishly over at Moriarty.  "I have to go," she says.  "I'm not here alone."

"I would be concerned if you were," Moriarty replies.  "And goodness knows you wouldn't be able to talk Sherlock out to a place like this with his shoulder injured."  She smells like sunscreen, strong sunscreen.  Joan supposes she should be glad, given that Moriarty's already had a cancer scare.  She doesn't like that she's concerned.  "Go back to your friend, Watson.  Our game can wait for another day."

"Okay," Joan says.  She feels like there should be more than a pensive look on Moriarty's face as she turns to leave.  She feels like maybe she wants to keep up their strange habit of kissing when they part.

She does nothing, walking though soft, almost too-hot sand and not looking over her shoulder, back down the beach and to pretending that she's not seriously considering entering into this game.

Two weeks later, a plain brown envelope with her name on it is taped to the door of the brownstone when Joan gets back from her run.  Joan opens it distractedly, kicking the door closed with one foot.  Inside is a piece of thick, cold press watercolor paper  She turns the paper over in her hands, staring down at the scene depicted in what seems like only a handful of brush strokes.  She recognizes the style from her childhood, when her mother endeavored to educate her and Oren about Chinese art.

She is standing on the shore, looking out over the ocean in an obnoxious red windbreaker, her hair blowing in the wind.

On the back, in pencil, are two words and initials in a signature she recognizes well.

_Your move._

jm

 

 

_"escape was just a nod and a casual wave_

_Obsess about it, heavy for the next two days._

_It's only just a crush, it'll go away_

_It's just like the others it'll go away_

_Or maybe this is danger and you just don't know_

_you pray it all away but it continues to grow."_

_\- she wants revenge_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes:  
> \- It's never really specified if Oren is older or younger than Joan. I got the sense he was younger, but I can see him being older as well. Either way, he and Joan are pretty close in age, I think, so that's why I wrote out their dynamic the way I did.  
> \- Feel bad for Mr. Collins. And Marie Montclair. And Mr. Sheng. I feel really bad about that - and Jamie's non-reaction was entirely intentional.  
> \- Remaining PKE Group Dudes: 3 - Tenimont, you're next.  
> \- This chapter was originally meant to have a car chase, but I couldn't bring myself to write Moriarty rolling up and quoting Mean Girls. So that didn't happen. Sorry.  
> \- The comment about staying up late to sneak watching SNL is true to life - Joan's about my uncle's age and according to him (and like three media and politics professor's I've had of the same generation) it was THE thing to do at the time. Parents who grew up during the forties and fifties DID NOT APPROVE. Joan's mother, I think, definitely would not have.  
> \- Alex made me make sure Joan was in a good place at the end of this. Because we've both been pretty horrible to her as of late. I HOPE THIS IS OKAY.


End file.
